Some researchers and study participants have expressed an intuition that novel rhythmic sequences are easier to recall and reproduce if they have a melody, implying that melodicity (the presence of musical pitch variation) fundamentally enhances perception and/or representation of rhythm. But the psychoacoustics literature suggests that pitch variation often impairs perception of temporal information. To examine the effect of melodicity on rhythm reproduction accuracy, we presented simple nine-note auditory rhythms to 100 college students, who attempted to reproduce those rhythms by tapping. Reproductions tended to be more accurate when the presented notes all had the same pitch than when the presented notes had a melody. Nonetheless, a plurality of participants judged that the melodically presented rhythms were easier to remember. We also found that sequences containing a Scotch snap (a sixteenth note at a quarter note beat position followed by a dotted eighth note) were reproduced less accurately than other sequences in general, and less accurately than other sequences containing a dotted eighth note.

中文翻译：

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旋律或单调呈现后短节奏的再现精度

一些研究人员和研究参与者表达了一种直觉，即如果有旋律，新的节奏序列更容易回忆和再现，这意味着旋律（音高变化的存在）从根本上增强了节奏的感知和/或表现。但心理声学文献表明，音高变化通常会损害对时间信息的感知。为了检查旋律对节奏再现准确性的影响，我们向 100 名大学生展示了简单的九音符听觉节奏，他们试图通过敲击来再现这些节奏。当呈现的音符都具有相同的音高时，复制往往比呈现的音符具有旋律时更准确。尽管如此，许多参与者认为旋律呈现的节奏更容易记住。