Priming effects on musical chord identification: Facilitation or disruption?

The present study examined whether priming effects on chord identification are facilitative or disruptive, by employing a control (no-prime) condition in addition to a related-prime condition and an unrelated-prime condition. According to the activation hypothesis, which predicts a facilitative effect of musically related chords, responses are expected to be faster in the related-prime condition than in the control condition. In contrast, according to the schema hypothesis, which supposes a disruptive effect of musically unrelated chords, responses are expected to be slower in the unrelated-prime condition than in the control condition. No facilitative effect was found in the related-prime condition, whereas a marked disruptive effect was found in the unrelated-prime condition. The disruptive effect was more pronounced in the major-chord condition than in the minor-chord condition, and more salient at an interonset interval of 1 s than at 3 s or 7 s. These results are interpreted in terms of the schema hypothesis.