Stimulus predictability and liking enhance auditory-motor encoding and memory for melodies

The ability to predict or anticipate musical events contributes to music-related pleasure and memory; however, their contributions to the learning to play a new melody has been less well-explored. In this study, we investigated how musical predictability and pleasure influenced how non-musicians learned to play short melodies, as well as post-learning recall. Participants listened to and rated perceived pleasure for melodies that varied in predictability while we measured pupil dilation as an index of attention and arousal. Participants then learned to play the ending of each melody. We found that pupil dilation during listening was sensitive to musical predictability and liking ratings, with pupil size increasing for more liked and more predictable melodies. During the motor learning task, participants’ asynchrony scores were modulated by liking and predictability: more predictable melodies resulted in lower asynchrony overall while more liked melodies elicited steeper learning slopes. During recall, more predictable melodies were better recognized. Finally, individuals with better recognition performance also showed greater pupil dilation during the initial listening, along with steeper motor learning slopes. Altogether, these findings indicate that arousal is linked to predictability and pleasure, and that all three factors influence auditory encoding, motor learning and explicit recognition of musical stimuli.