EVENT-RELATED POTENTIAL (ERP) STUDY OF MUSICAL EXPECTANCY - COMPARISON OF MUSICIANS WITH NONMUSICIANS

Musicians and nonmusicians listened to musical phrases that were either selected from the classical repertoire or composed for the experiments. The phrases ended either congruously or with a nondiatonic, diatonic, or rhythmic violation. Percentage of correct responses was analyzed in Experiment 1, and event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded in Experiments 2 and 3. Musicians performed better than nonmusicians in recognizing familiar musical phrases and classifying terminal notes. The differences found as a function of expertise were larger for unfamiliar than for familiar melodies. The ERPs to the end notes differed both in terms of amplitude and latency between musicians and nonmusicians, and as a function of participants' familiarity with the melodies and type of violation. Results show that expertise influences the decisional rather than the purely perceptual aspects of music processing and that ERPs can provide important insight into the study of music perception.