Barbara Tillman: "Musical expectations"

ABSTRACT:
By mere exposure to musical pieces in everyday life, Western listeners
acquire sensitivity to the regularities of the tonal system and to the
context dependency of musical sounds. This implicitly acquired tonal
knowledge allows listeners to develop expectations for future events when
listening to a musical sequence. Musical expectations influence the
processing of incoming events (with facilitated processing for expected
events and increased neural resources for unexpected events) and have been
attributed a role for musical expressivity. I will present studies
investigating musical expectations in the perception of melodies and chord
sequences, notably by manipulating tonal function and temporal occurrence.