On the Perception of Interleaved Melodies

A recent result indicates a direct influence of musical anticipations on musical perception. Specifically, Dowling, Lung, and Herrbold (1987) reported that subjects listening to interleaved melodies have an easier time detecting small changes in a cue melody than they do in detecting larger changes, because the former are in accord with their anticipations, whereas the latter are not. However, we report a series of experiments that fail to replicate the result of Dowling et al.