An efficient and adaptive test of auditory mental imagery

Abstract

The ability to silently hear music in the mind has been argued to be fundamental to musicality. Objective measurements of this subjective imagery experience are needed if this link between imagery ability and musicality is to be investigated. However, previous tests of musical imagery either rely on self-report, rely on melodic memory, or do not cater in range of abilities. The Pitch Imagery Arrow Task (PIAT) was designed to address these shortcomings; however, it is impractically long. In this paper, we shorten the PIAT using adaptive testing and automatic item generation. We interrogate the cognitive processes underlying the PIAT through item response modelling. The result is an efficient online test of auditory mental imagery ability (adaptive Pitch Imagery Arrow Task: aPIAT) that takes 8 min to complete, is adaptive to participant's individual ability, and so can be used to test participants with a range of musical backgrounds. Performance on the aPIAT showed positive moderate-to-strong correlations with measures of non-musical and musical working memory, self-reported musical training, and general musical sophistication. Ability on the task was best predicted by the ability to maintain and manipulate tones in mental imagery, as well as to resist perceptual biases that can lead to incorrect responses. As such, the aPIAT is the ideal tool in which to investigate the relationship between pitch imagery ability and musicality.

Fig. 1

Schematic of the updated PIAT trial. In the schematic, the imagined note matches the actual sounding probe tone. Hence, this example represents a correct probe trial, and the participant should respond with “Match”. The Begin display/ascending scale, start note/black dot, and hold arrow were displayed for 2 s, while all other arrows (with and without sounded notes) were displayed for 1 s

Fig. 2

Schematic of the cognitive process model for the PIAT. Blue outlines represent processes of the model (Perceptual Set-Up, Auditory Imagery Generation, Manipulation, and Maintenance) that are the same for all trials, regardless of the probe accuracy. Orange outlines represent the processes of the model (Similarity Comparison and Decision-Making) that vary depending if the probe is correct or incorrect

Fig. 3

Pearson correlations between aPIAT scores and related measures as a function of aPIAT test length. a Musical WM tests. b Non-musical WM tests. c Subscales of the Goldsmiths Musical Sophistication Index (Gold-MSI) questionnaire. d Subscales of the Bucknell Auditory Imagery Scale (BAIS)

Fig. 4

Reliability metrics for the aPIAT as a function of test length. ‘Standard error’ corresponds to the (mean) standard error of aPIAT ability estimates at timepoint 1, as computed by the IRT model (144 participants). ‘Test–retest reliability’ corresponds to the Pearson correlation coefficient between aPIAT ability estimates at timepoints 1 and 2 (66 participants). The shaded regions plot 95% confidence intervals