ABSTRACT

Melodies are seen to be listened to and remembered according to a few perceptually salient features. Mental schemas, developed from early childhood in the course of heating many of the culture`s melodies, search for and extract these features from novel melodic information. The hierachy of melodic features -pitch, contour, tonality, and interval size- appears in adult behavior as in the developmental sequence. The mental schemas include more general, higher order information than specific pithes at specific temporal intervals. Having established the importance of schemata in the development and use of melodic perception become the foundation for memory and comprehension of more complex musical structure.