Musical Expertise Selectively Modulates the Interplay of Tonality and Meter in Short-Term Memory

Music training enhances sensitivity to both temporal and non-temporal auditory regularities, but their joint impact on short-term memory remains unclear. This study explored whether tonality and meter interact or function independently in short-term memory and how musical expertise modulates this relationship. Thirty-six musicians and 36 nonmusicians participated in a pitch memory task (Experiment 1) or a rhythm memory task (Experiment 2) that manipulated tonality and meter across melodies of varying lengths. Results from Experiment 1 demonstrated that musicians process tonality and meter independently during pitch memory, while nonmusicians’ performance was influenced by the interaction between tonality and meter. In contrast, Experiment 2 showed that both groups were affected by the interaction between tonality and meter in rhythm memory, indicating a different pattern of cognitive processing compared to pitch memory. Furthermore, meter generally enhanced participants’ performance in both tasks, suggesting that temporal regularity (the “when”) might play a more crucial role than non-temporal structure (the “what”) in short-term memory. These findings suggest that pitch and time interact in short-term memory and that musical expertise modulates how tonality and meter are processed.