Chunking in tonal contexts: Information compression during serial recall of visually presented musical notes

Abstract

Chunking is defined as information compression by means of encoding meaningful units. To advance the understanding of chunking in musical memory, the present study tested characteristics of melodic sequences that might enable a parsimonious memory representation, namely, the presence of a clear tonal context and of melodic cells with clear labels. Musical note symbols, which formed either triads (Experiment 1) or cadences (Experiment 2), were presented visually and sequentially to musically experienced participants for immediate serial recall. The melodic sequences were varied on the within-participant factors list length (long vs. short list) and tonal structure (chunking-supportive vs. chunking-obstructive). Chunking-supportive sequences contained tones from a single diatonic key that formed melodic cells with a clear label, such as “C major triad”. Transitional errors showed that participants grouped notes into melodic cells. Mixed logistic regression modeling revealed that recall was more accurate in chunking-supportive sequences and that this advantage was more pronounced for more experienced participants in the long list length condition of Experiment 2. The findings suggest that a clear tonal context and melodic cells with clear labels benefit chunking in melodic processing, but that the subtleties of the process are additionally influenced by type, size, and number of melodic cells.