Music in a Serial Repetition Task: Is There Perseverative Behavior?

This paper revisits some of the processes that contribute to the study of perseveration. In particular it investigates whether the perseverative last step in an addition task (Brugger & Gardner, 1994) occurs in normal subjects with or without a systematic musical education. The classic mathematical addition task, which requires the repetitive change of the position of digits in a calculation (1000+40+1000+30+1000+20+ 1000+10) was applied to music, but with an exception in the change allowed in the last move. The sample consisted of 40 healthy college students from northern Greece (19 men, 21 women, 18 to 27 years of age). Two music tasks were used. The first consisted of 7 measures of descending, morphologically similar note patterns, and the subjects were asked to anticipate the eighth measure. The second required the prediction of the sixth measure of a more complex, ascending and descending five-measure pattern. For the majority of subjects and for all three tasks, regardless of the degree of creativity allowed by the instructions, there was a strong, incorrect imitative continuation of the way that subjects had previously responded to the tasks, i.e. an inappropriate maintenance of the pattern. Music has no specific response similar to the perseverative last step in the addition task, but the lack of a unique correct response does not prevent further study of this phenomenon.