Abstract
An expanded version of a reduced-pitch-pat tern model for melodic processing proposed by Oura and Hatano (1988a) assumes that experienced listeners represent melodies in long-term memory in terms of reduced pitch patterns and modifiers. Whether subjects could identify familiar tunes based on their putative reduced pitch patterns, with or without some additional information about modifiers, was investigated in two experiments. In the first experiment, identification performance of seven college music majors for 14 European folk songs were examined. Identification of tunes from their putative reduced pitch patterns alone was found to be very difficult, but paired associations between tunes and their putative reduced pitch patterns were acquired easily and retained. The second experiment with eleven college music majors showed that presenting one or two characteristic pitches in addition to reduced pitch patterns facilitated their identification. It seems that reduced pitch patterns represent structural properties of tunes but may not be sufficient to characterize them.