INFANTS’ PERCEPTION OF GOOD AND BAD MELODIES

Infants 7 to 10 months of age were exposed to repetitions of one of three melodies in transposition, the three melodies exhibiting different degrees of conformance to Western music structure. One was a good Western melody, consisting of notes from the diatonic scale; another was a bad Western melody with notes drawn from the chromatic scale but not from any single diatonic scale; and the third was a bad non-Western melody with notes not drawn from the chromatic scale. The infants were first trained to respond (i.e., turn) to a single-position change of three semitones in the standard melody (for visual reinforcement). They were subsequently tested for their discrimination of a one-semitone change, with all changed melodies presented in transposition. Infants discriminated the semi-tone change in the context of the good Western melody but not the bad Western or the bad non-Western melody. We discuss the structural and experiential factors that may underlie such performance differences.