The Pitch Imagery Arrow Task: Effects of Musical Training, Vividness, and Mental Control

Musical imagery is a relatively unexplored area, partly because of deficiencies in existing experimental paradigms, which are often difficult, unreliable, or do not provide objective measures of performance. Here we describe a novel protocol, the Pitch Imagery Arrow Task (PIAT), which induces and tr...

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Main Authors:	Gelding, Rebecca W., Thompson, William Forde, Johnson, Blake W.
Format:	Online
Language:	English
Published:	Public Library of Science 2015
Online Access:	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4373867/

id	pubmed-4373867
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	pubmed-43738672015-03-27 The Pitch Imagery Arrow Task: Effects of Musical Training, Vividness, and Mental Control Gelding, Rebecca W. Thompson, William Forde Johnson, Blake W. Research Article Musical imagery is a relatively unexplored area, partly because of deficiencies in existing experimental paradigms, which are often difficult, unreliable, or do not provide objective measures of performance. Here we describe a novel protocol, the Pitch Imagery Arrow Task (PIAT), which induces and trains pitch imagery in both musicians and non-musicians. Given a tonal context and an initial pitch sequence, arrows are displayed to elicit a scale-step sequence of imagined pitches, and participants indicate whether the final imagined tone matches an audible probe. It is a staircase design that accommodates individual differences in musical experience and imagery ability. This new protocol was used to investigate the roles that musical expertise, self-reported auditory vividness and mental control play in imagery performance. Performance on the task was significantly better for participants who employed a musical imagery strategy compared to participants who used an alternative cognitive strategy and positively correlated with scores on the Control subscale from the Bucknell Auditory Imagery Scale (BAIS). Multiple regression analysis revealed that Imagery performance accuracy was best predicted by a combination of strategy use and scores on the Vividness subscale of BAIS. These results confirm that competent performance on the PIAT requires active musical imagery and is very difficult to achieve using alternative cognitive strategies. Auditory vividness and mental control were more important than musical experience in the ability to perform manipulation of pitch imagery. Public Library of Science 2015-03-25 /pmc/articles/PMC4373867/ /pubmed/25807078 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0121809 Text en © 2015 Gelding et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
repository_type	Open Access Journal
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	US National Center for Biotechnology Information
building	NCBI PubMed
collection	Online Access
language	English
format	Online
author	Gelding, Rebecca W. Thompson, William Forde Johnson, Blake W.
spellingShingle	Gelding, Rebecca W. Thompson, William Forde Johnson, Blake W. The Pitch Imagery Arrow Task: Effects of Musical Training, Vividness, and Mental Control
author_facet	Gelding, Rebecca W. Thompson, William Forde Johnson, Blake W.
author_sort	Gelding, Rebecca W.
title	The Pitch Imagery Arrow Task: Effects of Musical Training, Vividness, and Mental Control
title_short	The Pitch Imagery Arrow Task: Effects of Musical Training, Vividness, and Mental Control
title_full	The Pitch Imagery Arrow Task: Effects of Musical Training, Vividness, and Mental Control
title_fullStr	The Pitch Imagery Arrow Task: Effects of Musical Training, Vividness, and Mental Control
title_full_unstemmed	The Pitch Imagery Arrow Task: Effects of Musical Training, Vividness, and Mental Control
title_sort	pitch imagery arrow task: effects of musical training, vividness, and mental control
description	Musical imagery is a relatively unexplored area, partly because of deficiencies in existing experimental paradigms, which are often difficult, unreliable, or do not provide objective measures of performance. Here we describe a novel protocol, the Pitch Imagery Arrow Task (PIAT), which induces and trains pitch imagery in both musicians and non-musicians. Given a tonal context and an initial pitch sequence, arrows are displayed to elicit a scale-step sequence of imagined pitches, and participants indicate whether the final imagined tone matches an audible probe. It is a staircase design that accommodates individual differences in musical experience and imagery ability. This new protocol was used to investigate the roles that musical expertise, self-reported auditory vividness and mental control play in imagery performance. Performance on the task was significantly better for participants who employed a musical imagery strategy compared to participants who used an alternative cognitive strategy and positively correlated with scores on the Control subscale from the Bucknell Auditory Imagery Scale (BAIS). Multiple regression analysis revealed that Imagery performance accuracy was best predicted by a combination of strategy use and scores on the Vividness subscale of BAIS. These results confirm that competent performance on the PIAT requires active musical imagery and is very difficult to achieve using alternative cognitive strategies. Auditory vividness and mental control were more important than musical experience in the ability to perform manipulation of pitch imagery.
publisher	Public Library of Science
publishDate	2015
url	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4373867/
_version_	1613203577040273408

The Pitch Imagery Arrow Task: Effects of Musical Training, Vividness, and Mental Control

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