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Music and cognitive psychology: Form-bearing elements

Hugues Dufourt a
a
Centre d'Information et de Documentation “Recherche Musicale”, CIDM IRCAM-CNRS, Centre Georges
Pompidou, Paris Cédex 04, France

Online Publication Date: 01 January 1989

To cite this Article Dufourt, Hugues(1989)'Music and cognitive psychology: Form-bearing elements',Contemporary Music
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Music and cognitive psychology: Form-bearing elements

Hugues Dufourt
Centre d'Information et de Documentation "Recherche Musicale",
CIDM IRCAM-CNRS, Centre Georges Pompidou, F-75191 Paris C~dex 04, France

Contemporary music offers cognitive psychology models that establish relevant and computable
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features for a theoretical field which had remained unspecified up to now. Cognitive psychology
outlines a theory of the relations between memory and perception for which music functions as a test
of effectiveness and coherence. The relationship of cognitive psychology to contemporary music is
that of a theory to its models. Music composition offers new ways of thinking which extend the range
of hypothetical constructions and offer proof of the fecundity of analogy. Cognitive psychology
produces original theories which lend new insight into perceptual mechanisms and challenge the very
foundations on which music is based.
KEYWORDS: Categorization, imprints, pitch, memory, timbre, source, texture.

This session of the s y m p o s i u m was d e v o t e d to potential form-bearing elements.

This concept refers to the set of objective conditions which an acoustic signal - or
indeed, d e v e l o p e d musical material - must meet in order to be pertinently
h a n d l e d by the auditory system. The w o r k in music psychology d o n e by A.
Bregman, S. Pinker, and S. McAdams initially dealt with the way in which the ear
organizes s o u n d (Bregman & Pinker, 1978; McAdams & Bregman, 1979). Psychol-
ogy has described a hierarchy of perceptual and cognitive constraints which
pertain to mental activity w h e n it focuses on music. Stephen McAdams' work on
the fusion and segregation of s o u n d streams, for instance, is representative of this
type of problem. The idea b e h i n d today's presentation is to reverse the per-
spective and ask w h a t conditions s o u n d m u s t meet in order to be amenable to
discriminating and assimilating operations p e r f o r m e d b y the h u m a n ear. The
biological and psychological constraints characterizing w h a t is called musical
material have their o w n order, differing notably from the order of complexity of
an acoustic signal. Following the psychologist J.J. Gibson, Jean-Claude Risset
n o t e d that psychoacoustics has stuck too closely to physics in analyzing per-
ceptual operations according to parameters of pitch, duration, intensity and
timbre (Risset, 1988, p. 14, 115, 20, 21). Psychoacoustics has neglected specific
auditory w o r k which "handles a very rich context, passing unconsciously from
one level to another, performing an analysis or, to the contrary, a synthesis of per-
ceptible data" (Ibid., p. 24). McAdams has p r o p o s e d experimental p r o c e d u r e s
giving these questions an affirmative status, notably examining the conditions
u n d e r which the auditory system detects a s o u n d source. In order for a source to
be perceived as such, it m u s t have a c o m m o n spatial origin, a coherent amplitude
behavior, harmonicity across c o m p o n e n t s and a regular system of resonance
structures (McAdams, 1987, p. 41-42). This provides a set of determinations

231
 232 HuguesDufourt

defining a new scientific object, halfway between psychophysic's methods of

quantification and cognitive psychology's research into listening.
One of cognitive psychology's main contributions has been to reveal the role
played by mental representations in perception. The exclusive consideration of
automatic responses governing causal relations between stimuli and reactions is
today given a back seat by the psycho-biological sciences in order to highlight
more subtle conditioning (systems of correlation obeying criteria or optimization,
suitability and self-regulation). Cognitive music psychology has therefore had to
assimilate recent developments in acoustics, the brain sciences, and artificial intel-
ligence as well as psycholinguistics and ethnomusicology.It has reintroduced
concepts of image representation, of expectation, of attention, of anticipation, of
learning, and of recognition. It stresses the role of memory in perceptual
processes and shows that it involves a higher, complex form of elaboration.
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Jacques Paillard (1987, p. 9) comments that respective advances in the fields of

cognitive psychology, neuropsychology and cognitive neuroscience must all be
taken into account. One of the ultimate goals of these new fields is to understand
the relation between perception and action, and to reveal mechanisms of
behavioral conduct.
Cognitive psychology reconsiders afresh old philosophical questions which, in
their original state, remained rudimentary and enigmatic. It is permissible to
assume that perception notes those traits of a physical signal which are most
useful to the survival of the organism. Acoustic causality- the identification of the
sound source- is basic to hearing, which is a defensive sense. The ear can evaluate
source direction and distance, and assess its initial energy, just as it is able to
detect minor changes in signal emission, indeed distinguish several simultaneous
sources. The phylogenesis of the human ear corroborates, thus informing us that
the original function of the ear was to supply information concerning the direction
and position of solids in an atmospheric medium. The ears possess remarkable
sensitivity to the least disturbance, for which it localizes the origins and sym-
bolizes the distance through additional cues such as intensity, spectrum (more or
less truncated in the treble range), and the level of reverberation in relation to
direct sound (Risset, 1988, p. 16). It is highly possible that this source identifica-
tion function is indispensible to musical listening which, were it to be deprived of
it (as is the case in electroacoustic music), would display a sort of fundamental dis-
satisfation with this artificial mutilation of its capacities (Cadoz, 1988). This is a
crucial issue, for it calls into question the structure of auditory perception which
seems above all centered on causality, conditioned by inference mechanisms and
completely constructed on the process of grouping acoustic elements into source
events. This pinpointing, this ordering of elements into an auditory image,
precedes any appreciation of the quality of the source by the ear (McAdams, 1987,
p. 43).
The validity of qualitative criteria, or the veracity of our senses and their
aptitude for informing us about reality, all bear examination today. Everything
leads us to trust what nature conveys to us by way of our senses, because sensory
information takes into account the physical invariants on which it is modeled. In
its very constitution, the human perceptual system retains that element of
coherence and stability which derives from the physical models informing it.
Because senses are congruent to their milieu (Shepard, 1984), an organism's
 Music and cognitive psychology 233

overall grasp of its environment is assured and reliable. It is precisely these condi-
tions of objectivity and consistency of sensory information that this session
sought to bring to the fore through what are called "form-bearing elements". To
fully understand the sense and extent of our adaptation to the physical environ-
ment, computer technology had to be able to dislocate natural data, to contradict
the normal functioning of perception, to provoke disequilibrium, to perturb reg-
ulating and integrating mechanisms by offering perception paradoxical or discor-
dant information. The computer can provide experimental conditions which take
us beyond the normal, attaining through technological artifice what remains
unavailable to our senses, thus provoking that which, precisely, never occurs in
nature.
According to McAdams (this volume), perception is engaged in an objectivizing
process which establishes the spatial and temporal coherence of perceived sound
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events via segmentation, simultaneous grouping or sequential organization. Per-

ception only operates on distinct values, on well-defined attributes which enable
it to classify and organize phenomena. Thus when physics provides us with con-
tinuous acoustic messages, the ear and brain strive to separate and discriminate.
At the same time, it is the task of the auditory system to comprehend and unify,
to convert - in the words of Maurice Pradines (1943) - "a quantitative multiplicity
of identical impressions into a qualitative variation in differing impressions" (p.
521). McAdams uses the word "categorization" to refer to this task of discrimina-
tion proper to perception. Its values exclude any breakdown into parts,
constituting such values into individualized, uniform entities suited to operations
of organization, comparison and recognition; the coherence of a sound object
depends on structural boundaries. Apprehending form in music depends on the
aptitude of the sound medium to offer perceivable articulations to the listener, to
engage the mechanisms of arranging and ordering. It requires clearly
differentiated elements which can enter into functional relationships. It also
requires the maintenance of certain invariants within the transformations the
system undergoes.
Following Piaget, cognitive psychology has shown that mental structures active
in perception are above all dynamic and integrating processes which unceasingly
compose and transform data. The work of assimilation performed by brain and
senses are not limited to pure categorical oppositions. Perceptual activity's sub-
stantiations are constantly reassessed as a function of perception's grasp on the
acoustic object. The more complex the stream of information, the richer and more
active is the auditory system's comprehension. In this regard, contemporary
music holds great interest for cognitive psychology because it offers an indetermi-
nate experimental field of composite and hybrid structures, of mutations of per-
ceptual organization, of operations involving incessant fusion and articulation.
Kaija Saariaho's music raises an original problem for psychology since her work
is located on the boundary between harmony and timbre. It uses sound endowed
with a high level of inharmonicity and develops forms completely based on
shifting relations of texture and timbre (see, for example, Saariaho, 1987). The
global process prevails over any potential analytical-type pinpointing. The trans-
formational act is no longer subordinated to a form of ordering. The works of
Gy~rgy Ligeti, Roger Reynolds, Tristan Murail and G6rard Grisey also present
processes in which perceptual categories remain unstable, where evolution is
neither cyclical nor repetitive yet does not thereby become formless or incom-
prehensible.
 234 HuguesDufourt

Cognitive psychology must be able to account for the ceaseless readjustment

effected by mental images, expressed as an experiential mutation, a qualitative
transformation of perceptual organization oscillating between the homogeneous
and the heterogeneous, between difference and variation. Cognitive psychology
demonstrates that all mental activity is engaged in an incessant process of
formation and specification. It stresses the work of coordination undertaken
within perceptual organization, indicating the variety and mobility of forms such
organization assumes, far from any fundamental invariance. It is therefore no
coincidence that cognitive psychology and musical production today converge on
this point. For both involve, in any event, an understanding of the rapport
between order and transformation.
Marie-Elisabeth Duchez (this volume) provides an historical and critical
analysis of the elaboration of the notion of pitch height in Western music. She
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reminds us that music psychology's interpretive framework supplies a set of con-

ditions which are necessary but not sufficient for grasping a phenomenon which
also issues from the cultural and scientific history of measurement. Her article
retraces the stages through which successive generations managed to quantify
and gain access to the realm of discursive relations, beyond intuitive modes of
knowledge (whether these be on the order of the sensible, the geometric, or the
causal). The concept of Pitch Height really only appeared with the institution of
active comprehension in conjunction with operative formulae and explicit defini-
tions. Understanding the history of music demands an elucidation of the genesis
of rational forms which would extend, in fact, beyond the concerns of cognitive
psychology.
Ir6ne Deli6ge (this volume) presents a reverse viewpoint, so to speak, by
showing that cognitive psychology can contribute to a better understanding of a
cultural event through well conducted experimentation. She examines the perfor-
mance of memory and identification strategies exhibited by attentive listeners
who attempt to recognize a complex musical form. Musical education probably
plays a role in a subject's aptitude to perform grouping operations a n d perceive
structural hierarchies. Deli6ge hypothesizes that imprints become established
through the reiteration of cues, during which memory performs the task of con-
densation and articulation. The brain seeks to grasp both the interdependence of
various factors and the particularities of each specific arrangement. Memory's
power of identification and construction through a discriminatory operation is
used to coordinate and simplify elements, distinguishing them from the whole.
Mental activity thus consists of an analytic, discriminating act and an organizing
act which is indissociable from the former. Memory thereby performs the simul-
taneous task of articulation and composition within this order, demonstrating its
power of schematization (in the philosophical sense of term).
Marco Stroppa (this volume) also deals with the problematic of memory by
introducing the concept of "musical information organisms". A musical work can
be Conceived as the history of the reception, accumulation and assimilation of
such organisms.
The contribution of David Wessel and David Bristow was devoted to timbre. Is
timbre able to undergo differentiation similar to that practiced on pitch? The
question is whether the idea of a timbral continuum with its hybrids and inter-
polations is perceptually pertinent, leading to hearable and decodable coherent
structures. Does timbral music offer anything other than a continual shifting
 Music and cognitive psychology 235

which disconcerts ear and mind, denying the listener any possibility of a cate-
gorical approach? Wessel and Bristow feel that acoustic properties which have
perceptual value can be controlled with the aid of a computer, bypassing musical
instruments and with no reference to relationships stemming from physical
systems. It is simply a question of operations involving the distribution of spectral
energy and on its variation across time. A multidimensional representation cor-
relates physical parameters with perceptual attributes. Within this model,
frequency modulation synthesis techniques create a timbral continuum allowing
for the transposition of sequences. One might ask, as do psychoacousticians,
what factors are involved in establishing timbral identity, enabling it to resist both
distortions and variations in reverberation.
Jean-Baptiste Barri6re (this volume) denies the notion of timbre its traditional
status as those stable sound qualities which remain recognizable across changes
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in register, dynamics and articulation. He assigns timbre an entirely new

meaning. Instead of being the residual remnants of everything in sound quality
that escapes human analysis, timbre becomes an analytic environment
encompassing a dialectic of categories. A category, for Barri6re, is a way of com-
prehending and perceiving as well as a characteristic of what is perceived and
comprehended. The form-bearing element is an ordering structure which
includes both material and organization, the axiomatic and the descriptive. The
substitution of one arrangement for another, interversion, transition, and permu-
tation don't therefore generate confusion. Timbral composition is no longer
situated on the plane of the immediate, on the plane of conventional practice in
which the implicit still plays a large part. It shifts completely over to the plane of
objectivity, that level where technological and symbolic structures meet, where
formal analysis and material verification reinforce one another. Formalizing a
language of timbre provides it with increased explicitness and clarity. It coordi-
nates a plurality of expressions with distinct dimensional scales and different
degrees of complexity. Composing means operating simultaneously on an order
of operative constraints and on their symbolic formulation. And it also means
insuring the cognitive relevance of these processes. The problem facing
composers is radically new: cognitive sciences, psychoacoustics and specialized
fields researching perception and memory are invoked to replace what history
had accomplished through trial and error, making imperceptible progress within
the impetuous continuity of tradition.
Formalization gains in rigor what it loses in intuitive proof, in practical utility.
The development of operative capacities proper to formal systems must find a
counterpart in the enhanced precision and salience of objects offered to listening.
Barri6re feels that a certain register of relations can be extracted from excitation
and resonance modes, which will subsequently lead to the application of compu-
tational rules. The compositional algorithm is thus ordered according to a system
of primitive articulations and simulation models. It enhances these models and
performs predictable transformations. The idea of a hierarchy of sound paramet-
ers loses its traditional foundation. Timbre is capable of sustaining an organiza-
tion equal to that of pitch. The elaboration of constructive procedures goes hand
in hand with a reinterpretation and a complication of perceptible cues, which
therefore entails a different conception of music.
This session's presentations were thus marked by the originality of the
problems musical production raises today for cognitive psychology. Music offers
 236 Hugues Dufourt

psychology examples of auditory paradoxes of types of representation which

would have been unthinkable prior to the advent of computer-aided composition.
Conversely, the influence of science and technology on procedures of musical
composition has become determining; the "natural" language of traditional music
is progressively being replaced by artificial languages which reveal implicit
categories of perception and higher mental processes and raise, in return, the
question of the status of signifying forms.

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to appear in Le Timbre: M~taphores pour la Composition, J.B. Barri6re (ed.), Paris: Christian Bourgois
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