# The Effect of Isomorphic Pitch Layouts on the Transfer of Musical Learning +
## 4 Discussion
### Melody Transfer Task  
For the transfer task, the most important hypothesis test (H3, in Section 1) was whether participants performed better in an untrained key when playing on an isomorphic pitch layout than when playing a non-isomorphic layout. For musicians, this hypothesis was strongly confirmed--their performances, as quantified by the ratio \(Accuracy/Inaccuracy\) (see Section 2.5), were 57% better on the isomorphic Wicki version than on the non-isomorphic version and 40% better on the isomorphic Bosanquet than the non-isomorphic version. However, for non-musicians playing the Bosanquet-like layouts, the results were counter to this hypothesis--performances were better on the non-isomorphic version (by 38%). There are at least two plausible mechanisms (detailed in Section 1) to explain the advantages of isomorphic layouts for musicians: (a) any given spatial relationship always produces the same sized musical interval, so they are more consistent; (b) they have a consistent pitch axis, which allows players to assess the pitch of any given button purely by its spatial position. Neither is true for non-isomorphic layouts (by definition). Arguably, these advantages are only of relevance to players who already have some degree of musical sophistication, for example, the capacity to aurally distinguish differently sized intervals rather than being aware only of a general melodic contour. The above argument implies that, for non-musicians, we would see a reduced positive effect or no distinct effect at all. For non-musicians, although we saw no distinct effect with the Wicki-like layouts, we unexpectedly saw a distinct negative effect with the Bosanquet-like layouts. A possible reason for this--as can be seen in Figure 8--is that, on the non-isomorphic Bosanquet-like layout, all the scale pitches within a given octave are arranged on two rows rather than three. This means that, just by sticking to a single row and following the contour of the melody, a moderate number of correct pitches would result. In other words, the non-isomorphic Bosanquet layout allows for a simple playing strategy to achieve moderate accuracy (there is no difference in the numbers of rows per octave in the isomorphic and non-isomorphic versions of the Wicki-like layouts). It is also worth noting that the _Accuracy_ values for non-musicians in this task were low (hovering around 0.25, see Figure 21). It may be that the simple strategy just described is useful for improving performance from low levels, whereas isomorphism is useful for improving performance from higher levels. This also raises another question, which is whether a one-dimensional isomorphic layout--a single row of buttons each ascending by a semitone--would be advantageous for learning. However, that is beyond the scope of this article. The next most important hypothesis test investigated whether participants perform better in the trained key when playing on an isomorphic version of a given layout. There was distinct evidence in favour of this hypothesis--non-musicians' performances on the Wicki-like layouts, as quantified by the ratio \(Accuracy/Inaccuracy\), were 17% better on the isomorphic version; musicians' performances on the Bosanquet-like layouts were 28% better on the isomorphic version. Under the other two conditions (non-musicians playing Bosanquet-like layouts and musicians playing Wicki-like layouts), there was no strong evidence pro or contra isomorphism. Although no formal hypothesis tests were performed, Figure 23 shows that performances in the untrained key were not, on average, worse than those in the trained key.