Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to I Peretz.
Contrasting with previous reports, left-ear advantage was found for recognition of chords by non-musicians (n = 16). It is suggested that the less memory is involved the more the effect may appear in musically naive subjects.
Right-handed university subjects were presented with monaural melodies that either conformed to the rules of the Western tonal system (tonal melodies) or that systematically deviated from it (atonal melodies) while containing similar contours and pitch skips. Subjects were tested under two different task instructions. One group was requested to judge whether each melody sounded correct or not (the nonaffective task); the other group had to judge whether each melody sounded pleasant or not (the affective task). The nonaffective task was found to elicit essentially no ear difference. In contrast, the affective instruction induced opposite and reliable laterality effects, depending on the valence of the response. The pleasant responses were indicative of a left hemisphere predominance and the unpleasant responses of a right hemisphere predominance. The results are consistent with the claim that the left hemisphere is biased toward positive emotions and the right to negative emotions. Moreover, the results suggest that affective appreciation of melodies is dissociable from their nonaffective judgment.
The recognition of text and tune in songs was examined in a music-agnosic patient and five matched controls. Listeners had to focus on one component of the song at a time (text or music) and had to decide whether the component was familiar or unfamiliar. Songs were either matched (i.e., an original familiar or an original unfamiliar song) or mismatched (a combination of a familiar component with an unfamiliar one). Normal listeners displayed response patterns that are congruent with those obtained previously in different experimental settings and which showed that text and tune are difficult to separate. Data collected in the patient, however, suggest some independence between text and music in songs. Moreover, the usual asymmetry in favor of text was much reduced when later verses were used. Overall, the results are interpreted as revealing strong association, not integration, between the musical and the verbal component of familiar songs.