Performed or observed keyboard actions affect pianists' judgements of relative pitch

Bruno H. Repp, Gunther Knoblich

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract (may include machine translation)

Action can affect visual perception if the action's expected sensory effects resemble a concurrent unstable or deviant event. To determine whether action can also change auditory perception, participants were required to play pairs of octave-ambiguous tones by pressing successive keys on a piano or computer keyboard and to judge whether each pitch interval was rising or falling. Both pianists and nonpianist musicians gave significantly more rising responses when the order of key presses was left-to-right than when it was right-to-left, in accord with the pitch mapping of the piano. However, the effect was much larger in pianists. Pianists showed a similarly large effect when they passively observed the experimenter pressing keys on a piano keyboard, as long as the keyboard faced the participant. The results suggest that acquired action-effect associations can affect auditory perceptual judgement.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)2156-2170
Number of pages15
JournalQuarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology
Volume62
Issue number11
DOIs
StatePublished - Apr 2009
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • Action
  • Action observation
  • Internal models
  • Pitch perception
  • Prediction
  • Tritone paradox

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