A comparison of listeners' musical cognition using a continuous response assessment

The purpose of this study was to assess the degree to which listeners can discern if melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic parameters and pairings of these parameters are abstracted from the ongoing flow of a musical event. Students in Grades 3, 6, 9, and 12(N = 114) listened three times to 12 prerecorded, four-phrase songs and moved the pointer of a Continuous Response Digital Interface dial to indicate whether they considered the second, third, and fourth phrase of each song to be the same as, similar to, or different from the songs initial phrase. In the significant grade-by-phrase-type interaction, students in Grades 3, 6, and 9 identified phrases predetermined as being the same as a song's initial phrase a greater percentage of time than they did similar or different phrases; students in Grade 12 identified different phrases more often than they identified phrases that were the same as or similar to the initial phrase.