Computational modeling of musical enculturation: An investigation of multicultural music learning using self-organizing maps
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2016
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Haverford College. Department of Psychology
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Thesis
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Award
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eng
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Open Access
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Abstract
Past research has shown that children are able to implicitly learn the underlying melodic structure of their native culture's musical system, even without formal musical training. Although implicit musical learning has been well studied, little is known about non-Western and multicultural musical enculturation. The present study addressed these issues though three experiments using self-organizing maps (SOMs), a type of neural model, to simulate implicit musical learning. Experiment 1 used SOMs to simulate Western, Chinese, and Hindustani musical enculturation, each learned independently from one another. Experiment 2 simulated a child growing up in a multicultural context, to investigate whether they might learn the structure of multiple native systems. Experiment 3 simulated an adult encountering an unfamiliar culture, to examine whether adults – not only children – may implicitly acquire the syntax of new musical systems. Results generally supported the plausibility of successful multicultural learning, with the caveat that certain systems disrupted the learning of others. Our findings led to further discussion of cross-cultural similarities between musical systems and the implications of these connections.