Training of auditory discrimination of musical notes and learning to read melodic fragments

Abstract

Lower scores of conditional relations with auditory-visual than visual-visual musical stimuli have been frequently reported in participants with untrained ears. This study evaluated the effect of training auditory discrimination of musical notes on the learning of conditional relations between musical stimuli, in the formation of equivalent classes and recombinative reading with melodic fragments. Four undergraduate students were initially submitted to a discriminative training with associated pairs, distributed in two conditions: Auditory (sounds of musical notes) and Visual (notes in sheet music). Then, they all participated in matching-to-sample AB and AC conditional relations training, separately and mixed, with melodic fragments (A), sheet music (B), and keyboard figures (C). The number of stimulus exemplars increased from two to four over two phases. The reinforcement density was lowered in the last mixed training of each phase. Before and after each phase, conditional relations and keyboard playing were evaluated, with training and recombined stimuli. Participants in Auditory Condition learned AB relationships with fewer trials in Phase 1. Test performances showed equivalent class formation, transfer of stimulus control to the untrained keyboard playing response, and recombinative reading of melodic fragments, and these results were similar in both experimental conditions. Auditory-visual relations scores were lower than visual-visual relations scores also for participants with training in musical notes discrimination. The small effect of the Auditory Condition was explained in part by different stimuli (notes vs. melodic fragments) and procedures (associated pairs vs. MTS) used in the auditory discrimination training and for teaching conditional relations.