メロディ認知における“調性感”と終止音導出

抄録

Psychological reality of a “central tone” in the highly “tonal” melody was investigated by using the method of “final tone extrapolation”. Five kinds of stimulus tone sequence were made from each of the 35 six-tone melodic sequences (original sequences), for which rating scores of “tonality feeling” had been obtained; i.e., a two-tone sequence using the first two tones, a three-tone sequence using the first three tones, and so on up to a six-tone sequence using all of six tones, of each of the original sequences. Twenty-four subjects were asked to add an appropriate “final tone” to each of the stimulus tone sequences by using a keyboard of an instrument. For each of the sequences made from the “tonal” original melodic sequences, the final tone chosen tended to be restricted to a few specific tones in all five types of the tone sequences, while for the “atonal” original melodic sequences, the final tone chosen was diversely different. The results were discussed in relation to the “coherency” of a melody and other processing characteristics of human melody cognition.