Tonal Violations Interact with Lexical Processing: Evidence from Cross-modal Priming Meagan E. Curtis 1 and Jamshed J. Bharucha 2 1 Dept. of Psych. & Brain Sciences, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, 2 Tufts University, Boston, Massachusetts INTRODUCTION EXPERIMENT 1: METHODS RESULTS CONCLUSIONS Subjects Twenty-four volunteers from the Dartmouth community Behavioral task Decide as quickly and accurately as possible whether the visual stimulus is a word or a nonword Follow Up In experiment 1, participants were not required to attend to the auditory stimuli. They were instructed to concentrate on the visual task. In experiment 2, participants were required to attend to the auditory stimuli. They were asked to perform a chord discrimination task after the word discrimination task. We anticipated that the chord discriminations would be influenced by the visual stimuli, just as the word discriminations were influenced by the auditory stimuli in experiment 1. pagic + Random tones (500 ms) Fixation Context chord (3000 ms) Word/ Nonword Target chord (1000 ms) Trial F(1,23)=5.1, p=.03 Some aspects of a stimulus are processed in a multi-modal manner and can be informative across modalities. For instance, a sound emanating from a specific location will draw attention to that location and allow for faster processing of visual and haptic information coming from that direction. Our investigations examine whether specific aspects of music are processed in a multi-modal manner, allowing for cross-modal priming between the auditory and visual systems. Target Chord Organ C G C F# # # # # Context TargetChord Expected Target Unexpected Target MUSICAL EXPECTANCY The goal of our investigations was to determine whether musical expectancy violations can be informative across modalities, alerting the perceptual systems to anticipate other low probability stimuli. Expectancy can be easily modulated using musical stimuli.Once a tonal context has been established, listeners expect subsequent chords and notes to adhere to the established tonality. If tonality is violated, an expectancy violation occurs. Participants heard chord progressions in which the target chord either adhered to or violated the established tonality. A visual discrimination task was presented simultaneously with the target chord. The visual stimuli consisted of familiar and novel stimuli: words and nonwords. STIMULI Participants were faster to identify familiar visual stimuli (words)when they were presented with the expected target chord than when the chord was unexpected. However, participants were faster to identify novel visual stimuli (nonwords) when they were presented with the unexpected target chord than when the chord was expected. EXPERIMENT 2: METHODS Subjects Ten volunteers from the Dartmouth Community Participation Criterion All subjects were given a chord discrimination pretest. Only those who could perform the task significantly above the level of chance could participate. Behavioral tasks Decide as quickly and accurately as possible whether the visual stimulus is a word or a nonword. Then decide whether the context chord and the target chord are related or unrelated. chord? narse + Fixation Context chord (3000 ms) Word/ Nonword Target chord (1000 ms maximum) Trial Related/ Unrelated (Displayed until response occurs) Random tones (500 ms) Time Note: The same stimuli were used in experiments 1 and 2 RESULTS Target Chord F(1,9)=5.9, p=.04 Target Chord F(1,9)=6.5, p=.03 The results of experiment 1 were replicated. Additionally, the error rates to the chord discrimination task reveal a similar effect; words influenced participants to judge chords as being related, whereas nonwords influenced them to judge chords as being unrelated. Musical expectancy and lexical familiarity appear to be processed in a multi-modal manner. Low probability stimuli can be informative across modalities, alerting the perceptual systems to prepare for other low probability stimuli, whereas high probability stimuli alert the perceptual systems to anticipate other high probability stimuli.