Partial information transmission can be found in music attributes

Previous studies have proved that partial information transmission can be found between intensity and pitch. In our last study, it was demonstrated that the timbre attribute can be transmitted as partial information between timbre and intensity. We manipulated the two attributes of stimulus, namely, timbre (piano vs. violin) and pitch (high vs. low), to find out whether they also have partial information transmission. We used the two-choice ‘go/no-go’ paradigm, which included more ‘go’ trials of timbre. Our result showed that lateralized readiness potentials were elicited in ‘no-go’ trials, which meant that the timbre attribute had been transmitted to the response preparation stage before the intensity attribute was processed in the stimuli identification stage. This result supports the asynchronous discrete coding model in information processing. Therefore, we suggest that partial information transmission can be found in music attributes including timbre, intensity, and pitch.