The Rhythm Span Task: Comparing Memory Capacity for Musical Rhythms in Musicians and Non-Musicians

Abstract

The study introduces a rhythm memory task and compares performance of musicians and non-musicians. The rhythm span task with increasing and decreasing sequence length according to the participants' performance, measures the individual memory capacity for musical rhythms. Results show that musicians perform significantly better on the rhythm span task indicating that memory capacity for rhythms is superior after many years of formal musical training. Additionally performance correlates positively with an established pitch span task (Williamson & Stewart, 2010) as well as the five dimensions of the Gold-MSI self-report questionnaire (Müllensiefen et al., 2014) evaluating musical sophistication.

Short-term memory for spatial, sequential and duration information

“…A special case of sequence memory arises when time intervals themselves must be remembered. Most studies that investigate memory for sequences of durations test our ability to discriminate rhythms, that is, sequences of durations that are integer multiples of a discrete, quantised beat [ 47 ]. These have demonstrated a soft limit to the number of durations that can be remembered which is much greater than for non-rhythmic sequences.…”

Multi-scale Modelling of Segmentation

“…Further segmentation studies should overcome methodological issues concerning the validity of the participant sample by including an established questionnaire, such as the Goldsmith's Musical Sophistication Index (Gold-MSI, see Müllensiefen, Gingras, Musil, & Stewart, 2014), which has been recently used for assessments in musicianship studies (Carey et al, 2015;Schaal, Banissy, & Lange, 2015). This can be helpful not only for comparing research findings but also for improving recruitment and classification: Gold-MSI takes into account that training may not determine musical abilities such as perception of form (Bigand & Poulin-Charronnat, 2006;Lalitte & Bigand, 2006), and also that some musical skills do not result from formal music training (Müllensiefen et al, 2014).…”

Differential short-term memorisation for vocal and instrumental rhythms

“…On the other hand, their training may enable professional musicians to employ different forms of mental representation of rhythms than non-musicians (Aleman et al, 2000;Palmer & Krumhansl, 1990;Schaal et al, 2014). Musicians could use forms of visuo-spatial representations to memorise rhythms because they have been trained to transfer rhythms into musical notation.…”

“…Differences between musicians and non-musicians have received a fair bit of attention (Gaser & Schlaug, 2003;Koelsch, Schröger, & Tervaniemi, 1999;Musacchia, Sams, Skoe, & Kraus, 2007;Musacchia, Strait, & Kraus, 2008;Parbery-Clark, Skoe, Lam, & Kraus, 2009;Schaal, Banissy, & Lange, 2014;Zatorre, 1998), but it is unclear whether any effects of musical training will extend to differential processing in memory for rhythm. Several studies have shown superior performance on memory tasks by musicians (Jakobson, Lewycky, Kilgour, & Stoesz, 2008;Kilgour, Jakobson, & Cuddy, 2000;Schaal et al, 2014;Tervaniemi, Rytkönen, Schröger, Ilmoniemi, & Näätänen, 2001), which would indicate that musically trained subjects should exhibit generally superior performance at longer ISI than non-musicians, but whether this will affect memory for vocal versus clapstick rhythms is uncertain. Moreover, musical training may specifically improve memory for rhythm by fostering strategies such as categorisation of rhythmic intervals in terms of a set of learned duration values (e.g., quarter note, eighth note, etc.)…”

“…and/or visualised representation of rhythms using musical notation. Indeed, in a recent article, Schaal et al (2014) proposed a rhythm span task that uses a same/different decision task to estimate the number of "rhythm elements" that listeners can retain over a 2 second delay. In the first experiment, using their novel procedure, musicians had a significantly longer estimated rhythm span than non-musicians.…”