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Bamberger's studies of visual descriptions of rhythmic patterns led to a distinction between two kinds of rhythmic understanding: metric and figural (Bamberger, 1982). Metric understanding describes events in terms of a measured underlying beat, while figural understanding describes events in terms of the events surrounding them. The present study asked whether the ability to produce accurate figural representations is related to the level of metric understanding.Forty-nine children (6-12 years old), and forty-eight adults (17-45 years old), served as subjects. Twenty-four of the adults, but none of the children, were musically trained. Each listener completed four tasks: (1) drawing, (2) clap-back, (3) join-in, and (4) an intelligence test. For the first three tasks, eighteen rhythm sequences were designed so that metric and figural representations did not coincide.The drawing task required listeners to represent each sequence with symbols of their choice, so that someone else could reproduce the sequence from their description. For the clap-back task, listeners were asked to clap back the sequence. For the join-in task, listeners were asked to clap along with what they perceived to be the underlying beat of the sequence.For both children and adults correlations between accuracy on drawing and performance tests were significant for the figural drawers but not for the metric drawers. Accuracy of figural drawing is related, for both children and adults, to the ability to respond to the metric aspects of rhythm. Figural descriptions and metric actions may be complementary aspects of rhythmic understanding. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Twenty melodic tone sequences varying in harmonic structure were first presented once each to listeners selected from three different levels of previous musical training. Listeners rated each sequence on a 6-point scale of "pleasingness". Next, 5 sequences from the original set of 20 were each repeated 10 times in a row and rated after each repetition. The 5 sequences were assigned to listeners so that across listeners the 20 original sequences were equally represented. Finally, all 20 sequences were again each presented once for rating. At all levels of musical training, listeners showed a monotonic relationship between "pleasingness" and level of harmonic structure, with highest ratings of "pleasingness" associated with the highest level of structure. During repeated exposures, judged "pleasingness" increased at all levels of harmonic structure except the highest level, where a decrease of "pleasingness" with exposure was obtained. The effects of repetition did not, however, extend to the final ratings of the original set of 20 sequences. The data are discussed with reference to the optimal- complexity model of aesthetic judgement; specific attention is directed toward the cognitive processes determining sequence complexity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]