Abstract
The purpose of this study was to assess matrix training to teach twelve college students to play music notes and rhythms on the piano. We conducted two experiments using a multiple baseline design across participants. In Experiment 1, we taught participants to tact and play notes and rhythms on the piano when presented together as compound stimuli. After mastery, we tested to see if participants could tact and play the same notes and rhythms combined in different ways. We assessed whether participants could tact and play correctly when listening to audio clips with notes and rhythms, and play a musical piece with previously learned stimuli. In Experiment 2, we played a metronome in all conditions for three participants and faded out the metronome for the other participants. We tested to see whether participants could tact and play untrained compound stimuli before and after training and removed reinforcement before probes. We observed recombinative generalization, and novel piano play across all participants. During probes, no one played or tacted in the presence of audio clips proficiently. Results suggest that matrix training is an effective procedure to teach music skills to college students.