Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

We explored the extent to which working memory underpins the processing of relational information in melodies. Using a between subjects design, one group of participants was primed with a melodic stream while performing a concurrent 2-back task while the other group was also primed with the melodic stream but did not perform a concurrent task. Participants were then given a melodic relational categorization task where relations (melodic contour and intervals) could either match or not match the primed melody. Reaction times on the categorization task for primed melodies tended to be faster than for non-primed melodies in the notask condition, suggesting that relational information in melodies could influence behavior more under conditions where working memory resources were not being used in concomitant tasks. Given the marginal results, more data should be collected to ascertain the full extent to which working memory is involved in the processing of relational melodic content.