Melodic Memory and Its Dependence on Familiarity and Difficulty

This paper addresses one aspect of human music cognition, which is the recollection of melodic sequences stored in short-term memory, and the manipulation of such items in working memory, by measuring spans of successfully recalled melodic sequences. In order to avoid long-term memory collaboration in this task, short-term memory measurements are made using randomly-generated melodic sequences, which in turn may sound difficult and unfamiliar to many experimental subjects. We investigate the dependence of melodic span measures on such aspects as familiarity and difficulty, both in direct-order recalling (as it relates to short-term memory capacity) and in inverse-order recalling (as it relates to working memory capacity). We also discuss the relation of these measurements to cognitive models of short-term and working memory for verbal and melodic material.