Temporal grouping effects in verbal and musical short-term memory: Is serial order representation domain-general?

Abstract

The question of the domain-general versus domain-specific nature of the serial order mechanisms involved in short-term memory is currently under debate. The present study aimed at addressing this question through the study of temporal grouping effects in short-term memory tasks with musical material, a domain which has received little interest so far. We conducted three experiments with non-musicians who performed serial reconstruction of six-tone sequences, where half of the sequences were temporally grouped and the other half presented at a regular pace. The overall data pattern suggests that temporal grouping exerts the same effects on tone sequences reconstruction as in the verbal domain, except for ordering errors. This pattern was replicated in a fourth experiment with verbal material of the same structure as in musical memory experiments of this study. Our findings support the view that positional markers similar to those described in the verbal domain of short-term memory could be used to represent serial order in the musical domain of short-term memory.