The Role of Features and Context in Recognition of Novel Melodies

WE INVESTIGATED HOW WELL STRUCTURAL FEATURES such as note density or the relative number of changes in the melodic contour could predict success in implicit and explicit memory for unfamiliar melodies. We also analyzed which features are more likely to elicit increasingly confident judgments of "old" in a recognition memory task. An automated analysis program computed structural aspects of melodies, both independent of any context, and also with reference to the other melodies in the testset and the parent corpus of pop music. A few features predicted success in both memory tasks, which points to a shared memory component. However, motivic complexity compared to a large corpus of pop music had different effects on explicit and implicit memory. We also found that just a few features are associated with different rates of "old" judgments, whether the items were old or new. Rarer motives relative to the testset predicted hits and rarer motives relative to the corpus predicted false alarms. This data-driven analysis provides further support for both shared and separable mechanisms in implicit and explicit memory retrieval, as well as the role of distinctiveness in true and false judgments of familiarity.

Assessing Commonality and Differentiation for Packaging-Family Planning with Application to Medication Labels

This thesis presents a metric for assessing the commonality and differentiation of packaging-family planning with application to medical labels along with supporting background research and findings. Consumable products such as medications rely on the package or label to represent the contents. Package confusion has been widely recognized as a major problem for both over-the-counter and pharmacy-dispensed medications with potentially lethal consequences. It is critical to identify a medication as a member of a product family and differentiate its contributing elements based on visual features on the package or label to avoid consumer confusion and reduce dispensing errors. Indices that indicate degrees of commonality and differentiation of features in consumer products such as batteries, light bulbs, handles, etc for platforms have been shown to benefit development of engineered product families [6]. It is possible to take a similar approach for visual features in packaging such as typography, shape/form, imagery and color to benefit packaging-family development. This thesis establishes a commonality differentiation index for prominence of visual features on over-the-counter and pharmacy-dispensed medications based on occurrence, size, and location of features. It provides a quantitative measure to assist package designers in evaluating alternatives to satisfy strategic goals and improve safety. The index is demonstrated with several medications that have been identified by the Institute for Safe Medication Practice as commonly confused.