Influence of Tonal and Temporal Expectations on Chord Processing and on Completion Judgments of Chord Sequences

Abstract Pitch and time are two principal form-bearing dimensions in Western tonal music. Research on melody perception has shown that listeners develop expectations about ‘‘What’ ’ note is coming next and ‘‘When’ ’ in time it will occur. Our study used sequences of chords (i.e., simultaneously sounding notes) to investigate the influ-ence of these expectations on chord processing (Exper-iments 1 and 4) and subjective judgments of completion (Experiments 2 and 3). Both tasks showed an influence of tonal relations and temporal regularities: expected events occurring at the expected moment were processed faster and led to higher completion judgments. How-ever, pitch and time dimensions interacted only for completion judgments. The present outcome suggests that for chord perception the influence of pitch and time might depend on the required processing: with a more global judgment favoring interactive influences in con-trast to a task focusing on local chord processing