Ever since I first saw a dance performance I have wondered why it is that I am sometimes fascinated and touched by some people moving about on a stage, while at other times it leaves me completely indifferent. I will argue that an answer to this question has to be searched for in the way sensory stimuli are processed in the brain. After all, all our actions, perceptions and feelings are mediated and controlled by the brain. The thoughts and feelings (...) evoked by a dance performance are no exception and thus they too have a neural substrate in the brain. (shrink)

This is a theoretical and methodological statement of what isn't and what is Cognitive poetics. It is focused on Peter Stockwell's discussion of deixis; but, I claim, much of what I have to say on Stockwell's work would apply to some degree to the work of many other critics. I argue that Stockwell translates traditional critical terms into a "cognitive" language, but does not rely on cognitive processes to account for issues related to the texts discussed; and that he uses (...) these terms to label or classify poetic expressions rather than point out their interaction in generating poetic effects. The present paper does not presume to tell what is the "correct" way to handle those terms, but attempts to give examples of how the same terms could be used with reference to cognitive processes, so as to account for poetic effects. (shrink)

Following in a psychological and musicological tradition beginning with Leonard Meyer, and continuing through David Huron, we present a functional, cognitive account of the phenomenon of expectation in music, grounded in computational, probabilistic modeling. We summarize a range of evidence for this approach, from psychology, neuroscience, musicology, linguistics, and creativity studies, and argue that simulating expectation is an important part of understanding a broad range of human faculties, in music and beyond.

Music can be described as sequences of events that are structured in pitch and time. Studying music processing provides insight into how complex event sequences are learned, perceived, and represented by the brain. Given the temporal nature of sound, expectations, structural integration, and cognitive sequencing are central in music perception (i.e., which sounds are most likely to come next and at what moment should they occur?). This paper focuses on similarities in music and language cognition research, showing that music cognition (...) research provides insight into the understanding of not only music processing but also language processing and the processing of other structured stimuli. The hypothesis of shared resources between music and language processing and of domain-general dynamic attention has motivated the development of research to test music as a means to stimulate sensory, cognitive, and motor processes. (shrink)

In Flourish, the positive psychologist Martin Seligman (2011) identifies five commonly recognized factors that are characteristic of human flourishing or wellbeing: (1) “positive emotion,” (2) “relationships,” (3) “engagement,” (4) “achievement,” and (5) “meaning” (p. 24). Although there is no settled set of necessary and sufficient conditions neatly circumscribing the bounds of human flourishing (Seligman, 2011), we would mostly likely consider a person that possessed high levels of these five factors as paradigmatic or prototypical of human flourishing. Accordingly, if we wanted (...) to go about the practical task of actually increasing our level of wellbeing, we ought to do so by focusing on practically increasing the levels of the five factors that are characteristic of wellbeing. If, for instance, an activity such as musical engagement can be shown to positively influence each or all of these five factors, this would be compelling evidence that an activity such as musical engagement can positively contribute to one’s living a flourishing life. I’m of the belief that psychological research can and should be used, not only to identify and diagnose maladaptive psychological states, but identify and promote adaptive psychological states as well. In this article I advance the hypothesis and provide supporting evidence for the claim that musical engagement can positively contribute to one’s living a flourishing life. Since there has not yet been a substantive and up-to-date investigation of the possible role of music in contributing to one’s living a flourishing life, the purpose of this article is to conduct this investigation, thereby bridging the gap and stimulating discussion between the psychology of music and the psychology of wellbeing. (shrink)

This article reviews some of the ways in which philosophical problems concerning music can be informed by approaches from the cognitive sciences (principally psychology and neuroscience). Focusing on the issues of musical expressiveness and the arousal of emotions by music, the key philosophical problems and their alternative solutions are outlined. There is room for optimism that while current experimental data does not always unambiguously satisfy philosophical scrutiny, it can potentially support one theory over another, and in some cases allow us (...) to synthesize or reject traditional philosophical differences. (shrink)

Professor Rahn takes the approach to the analysis of Western art music developed recently by theorists such as Benjamin Boretz and extends it to address non-Western forms. In the process, he rejects recent ethnomusicological formulations based on mentalism, cultural determinism, and the psychology of perception as potentially fruitful bases for analysing music in general. Instead he stresses the desirability of formulating a theory to deal with all music, rather than merely Western forms, and emphasizes the need to evaluate an analysis (...) and compare it with other interpretations, and demonstrates how this may be done. The theoretical concepts which form the basis of Rahn's approach are discussed and applied: first to individual pieces of non-Western music which have enjoyed a fairly high profile in ethnomusicological literature, and second to repertoires or groups of pieces. The author also discusses the fields of anthropology and psychology, showing how his approach serves as a starting point for studies of perception and the concepts, norms, and values found in specific music cultures. In conclusion, he lists what he considers to be musical universals and takes up the more controversial issues implicit in his discussion. (shrink)

Abstract:Much of Western speculative metaphysics has subscribed to what has been called “explanatory rationalism,” which holds that there is a reason for everything that is and for the way everything is. Theodicies, or metaphysical attempts to solve the problem of evil, have relied on a special application of this principle of explanatory rationalism, namely, the principle of plenitude, which holds that the evil in the world is a necessary ingredient in the world's overall perfection or degree of reality. This essay (...) argues that the principle of plenitude is aesthetically motivated, and that only in art and perhaps in revealed religion can the demands of explanatory rationalism be satisfied. (shrink)

Addressed here is the psychological complexity of meter, notated and heard, in The Firebird and Part II of The Rite of Spring. Of concern from the standpoint of the listener are the competing forces of meter, displacement, and parallelism; how these forces take precedence, with melody and harmony falling into place accordingly. Duly supplanted is the motivicism of the Classical style, as Theodor Adorno observed some time ago. Also of consequence here are octatonic harmony and the strict performance style favored (...) by the composer on a life-time basis. (shrink)

Research indicates that people value music primarily because of the emotions it evokes. Yet, the notion of musical emotions remains controversial, and researchers have so far been unable to offer a satisfactory account of such emotions. We argue that the study of musical emotions has suffered from a neglect of underlying mechanisms. Specifically, researchers have studied musical emotions without regard to how they were evoked, or have assumed that the emotions must be based on the mechanism for emotion induction, a (...) cognitive appraisal. Here, we present a novel theoretical framework featuring six additional mechanisms through which music listening may induce emotions: (1) brain stem reflexes, (2) evaluative conditioning, (3) emotional contagion, (4) visual imagery, (5) episodic memory, and (6) musical expectancy. We propose that these mechanisms differ regarding such characteristics as their information focus, ontogenetic development, key brain regions, cultural impact, induction speed, degree of volitional influence, modularity, and dependence on musical structure. By synthesizing theory and findings from different domains, we are able to provide the first set of hypotheses that can help researchers to distinguish among the mechanisms. We show that failure to control for the underlying mechanism may lead to inconsistent or non-interpretable findings. Thus, we argue that the new framework may guide future research and help to resolve previous disagreements in the field. We conclude that music evokes emotions through mechanisms that are not unique to music, and that the study of musical emotions could benefit the emotion field as a whole by providing novel paradigms for emotion induction. (shrink)

This is an overview of analytic philosophy of music. It is in five sections, as follows: 1. What Is Music? 2. Musical Ontology 3. Music and the Emotions 4. Understanding Music 5. Music and Value.

We argue that formal linguistic theory, properly extended, can provide a unifying framework for diverse phenomena beyond traditional linguistic objects. We display applications to pictorial meanings, visual narratives, music, dance, animal communication, and, more abstractly, to logical and non-logical concepts in the ‘language of thought’ and reasoning. In many of these cases, a careful analysis reveals that classic linguistic notions are pervasive across these domains, such as for instance the constituency (or grouping) core principle of syntax, the use of logical (...) variables (for object tracking), or the variety of inference types investigated in semantics/pragmatics. The aim of this overview is to show how the application of formal linguistic concepts and methodology to non-linguistic objects yields non-trivial insights, thus opening the possibility of a general, precise theory of signs. (An appendix, found in the online supplements to this article, surveys applications of Super Linguistics to animal communication.). (shrink)

A música pode causar emoções fortes. Como havemos de compreender as respostas afetivas à música? Este artigo apresenta os principais enigmas filosóficos atinentes às emoções musicais. O problema principal diz respeito ao chamado "contágio": os ouvintes percebem a música como sendo expressiva de uma certa emoção (por exemplo, tristeza) e a música suscita neles essa mesma emoção. O contágio é desconcertante, pois entra em conflito com a principal teoria da emoção, de acordo com a qual as emoções são experiências de (...) valores (cognitivismo). Este artigo gira, sobretudo, em torno da apresentação crítica das várias respostas a este desafio ao cognitivismo. Apresenta, também, o paradoxo da música triste, isto é, a questão do motivo pelo qual apreciamos música triste. -/- Music can induce strong emotions. How are we to understand affective responses to music? This article presents the main philosophical puzzles pertaining to musical emotions. The chief problem concerns so-called "contagion": listeners perceive music as expressive of some emotion (say, sadness), and the music elicits the same emotion in them. Contagion is perplexing because it collides with the leading theory of emotion, according to which emotions are experiences of values (cognitivism). This article mostly revolves around the critical presentation of the various responses to this challenge to cognitivism. It also presents the paradox of sad music, i.e. the question of why we enjoy sad music. (shrink)

Speech and music reflect extraordinary aspects of human cognitive abilities. Pitch, as an important parameter in the auditory domain, has been the focus of previous research on the relations between speech and music. The present study continues this line of research by focusing on two aspects of pitch processing: pitch prominence and melodic expectation. Specifically, we examined the perceived boundary of prominence for focus/accent in speech and music, plus the comparison between the pitch expectation patterns of music and speech. Speech (...) (Mandarin Chinese) and music stimuli were created with different interval steps that increased from 1 semitone to 12 semitones from the third to the fourth word/note of a sentence/melody. The results showed that ratings of both accent/focus and expectation/surprise increased with increasing semitone distance from the baseline (though this pattern was mixed with tonal stability profiles for the melodies). Nevertheless, the perceived boundary of prominence was different for music and speech, with the boundary for detecting prominence in speech higher than that in music. Expectation also showed different patterns for speech and music. The results thus favor the suggestion that speech prosody and music melody tend to require specialized pitch patterns unique to their own respective communication purposes. (shrink)

Previous work demonstrates that music with more surprising chords tends to be perceived as more enjoyable than music with more conventional harmonic structures. In that work, harmonic surprise was computed based upon a static distribution of chords. This would assume that harmonic surprise is constant over time, and the effect of harmonic surprise on music preference is similarly static. In this study we assess that assumption and establish that the relationship between harmonic surprise and music preference is not constant as (...) time goes on. Analyses of harmonic surprise and preference from 1958 to 1991 showed increased harmonic surprise over time, and that this increase was significantly more pronounced in preferred songs. Separate analyses showed similar increases over the years from 2000 to 2019. As such, these findings provide evidence that the human perception of tonality is influenced by exposure. Baseline harmonic expectations that were developed through listening to the music of “yesterday” are violated in the music of “today,” leading to preference. Then, once the music of “today” provides the baseline expectations for the music of “tomorrow,” more pronounced violations—and with them, higher harmonic surprise values—become associated with preference formation. We call this phenomenon the “Inflationary-Surprise Hypothesis.” Support for this hypothesis could impact the understanding of how the perception of tonality, and other statistical regularities, are developed in the human brain. (shrink)

In this paper I present an account of musical arousal that takes into account key demands of formalist philosophers such as Peter Kivy and Nick Zangwill. Formalists prioritise our understanding and appreciation of the music itself. As a result, they demand that any feelings we have in response to music must be directed at the music alone, without being distracted by non-musical associations. To accommodate these requirements I appeal to a mechanism of contagion which I synthesize with the expectation-based arousal (...) mechanism proposed by Leonard Meyer. This account connects musical expressivity and arousal in a way that formalists have rejected, but I argue that it provides the best explanation of our observations of listener responses while also focusing on the music itself. (shrink)

In this article, I first address the question of how musical forms come to represent meaning—that is, the semantics of music—and illustrate an important conceptual distinction articulated by Leonard Meyer in Emotion and Meaning in Music between absolute or intramusical meaning and referential or extramusical meaning through a critical analysis of two recent films. Second, building examples of scholarship around a single piece of music frequently used in film—Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings—I follow the example set by Murray Smith in (...) Film, Art, and the Third Culture and discuss the complementary approaches of the humanities, the behavioral sciences, and the natural sciences to understanding music and its use in film. (shrink)

This essay addresses the collapse/incoherence problem for normative frameworks that contain both fundamental values and rules for promoting those values. The problem is that in some cases, we would bring about more of the fundamental value by violating the framework’s rules than by following them. In such cases, if the framework requires us to follow the rules anyway, then it appears to be incoherent; but if it allows us to make exceptions to the rules, then the framework “collapses” into one (...) that doesn’t make use of rules in the first place. The chapter begins with an examination of happiness and truth as fundamental values in Mill’s work, which lead into parallel versions of the collapse/incoherence problem in ethics and epistemology. It then sets out the collapse problem for rule-consequentialist approaches in ethics, truth-directed accounts of justification in epistemology, and epistemological approaches to argument cogency. The chapter closes with discussion of two potential solutions to the problem. (shrink)

The kind of collective improvisation attained by the “free jazz” at the beginning of the sixties sets a challenge to analytic theories of collective intentionality, that emphasize the role played by future-directed plans in the interlocking and interdependent intentions of the individual participants, because in the free jazz case the performers’ interdependence or [interplay] stems from an intuitive understanding between musicians. Otherwise said: what happens musically is not planned in advance, but arises from spontaneous interactions in the group. By looking (...) at the way jazz improvisers take up the challenge of making music together without a pre-conceived notion as to what kind of effect they will achieve and without a pre-set code of agreements, my aim has been to clarify what kind of strategies — other than advanced action plans and joint commitments — are used by improvising musicians to integrate their improvisations into a unified shared activity. In developing this proposal I initially drawn pre-theoretically on one paradigmatic study case — Ornette Coleman’s double quartet Free Jazz, A collective Improvisation and brought it in conversation with Husserl’s phenomenology of time. In a final move, I brought this phenomenological frame into dialogue with some recent readings of the predictive coding model. All in all, what we learned from the Free Jazz case is that the interdependence and interlocking of attitudes among individual participants characteristic of shared intention is not determined by a future-directed plan and the rational pressure to be responsive to and coordinate with others, it typically engages. Rather, in the free jazz case, the performers’ connection and interplay depend on the players’ readiness to feel each other out, by listening to each other playing, in a way that no doubt presupposes the Husserlian retention-protention scheme. (shrink)

Philosophers of music and psychologists have examined the various ways in which music is capable of arousing emotions in a listener. Among philosophers, opinions diverge as to the different types of music-induced emotions and as to their relevance to music listening. A somewhat neglected question concerns the possibility of developing a general criterion for the artistic relevance of music-induced emotions. In this paper, I will try to formulate such a criterion. In whatever way music may induce emotions and regardless of (...) the sorts of emotion music is taken to arouse, a given emotion will qualify as artistically relevant if and only if it is caused by appropriate listening, it is dependent on features of the piece of music as a work of art and is capable of further directing our attention to such features. (shrink)

We argue that a formal semantics for music can be developed, although it will be based on very different principles from linguistic semantics and will yield less precise inferences. Our framework has the following tenets: Music cognition is continuous with normal auditory cognition. In both cases, the semantic content derived from an auditory percept can be identified with the set of inferences it licenses on its causal sources, analyzed in appropriately abstract ways. What is special about music semantics is that (...) it aggregates inferences based on normal auditory cognition with further inferences drawn on the basis of the behavior of voices in tonal pitch space. This makes it possible to define an inferential semantics but also a truth-conditional semantics for music. In particular, a voice undergoing a musical movement m is true of an object undergoing a series of events e just in case there is a certain structure-preserving map between m and e. Aspects of musical syntax might be derivable on semantic grounds from an event mereology, which also explains some cases in which tree structures are inadequate for music. Intentions and emotions may be attributed at several levels, and we speculate on possible explanations of the special relation between music and emotions. (shrink)

One hundred years on from the infamous premiere of The Rite of Spring, Stravinsky’s epoch-defining ballet continues to evoke controversy and contention in both musicological and performance circles. Even to call it a ballet is to overlook, or compound, its problematic identity. Throughout its life span, most audiences will have encountered, valorised and identified the work as a landmark of orchestral musical modernism heard primarily, perhaps even exclusively, in concert halls and on audio recordings with not a dancer, theatre stage (...) or set in sight. Still to this day it thus remains one of music’s more remarkable split personalities: bifurcated along formalist and contextualist lines by Stravinsky’s ret⁠rospective and opportunistic assertion that he had written “un oeuvre architectonique et non anecdotique.”. (shrink)

Neurological syndromes in which consciousness seems to malfunction, such as temporal lobe epilepsy, visual scotomas, Charles Bonnet syndrome, and synesthesia offer valuable clues about the normal functions of consciousness and ‘qualia’. An investigation into these syndromes reveals, we argue, that qualia are different from other brain states in that they possess three functional characteristics, which we state in the form of ‘three laws of qualia’. First, they are irrevocable: I cannot simply decide to start seeing the sunset as green, or (...) feel pain as if it were an itch; second, qualia do not always produce the same behaviour: given a set of qualia, we can choose from a potentially infinite set of possible behaviours to execute; and third, qualia endure in short-term memory, as opposed to non-conscious brain states involved in the on-line guidance of behaviour in real time. We suggest that qualia have evolved these and other attributes because of their role in facilitating non-automatic, decision-based action. We also suggest that the apparent epistemic barrier to knowing what qualia another person is experiencing can be overcome by using a ‘bridge’ of neurons; and we offer a hypothesis about the relation between qualia and one's sense of self. (shrink)

We present an account of the phenomenon of music based upon the hypothesis that there is a close parallel between the mechanics of life and the mechanics of mind, a key factor in the correspondence proposed being the existence of close parallels between the concepts of gene and musical idea. The hypothesis accounts for the specificity, complexity, functionality and apparent arbitrariness of musical structures. An implication of the model is that music should be seen as a phenomenon of transcendental character, (...) involving aspects of mind as yet unstudied by conventional science. (shrink)

Several tensions run through philosophical debates on the nature of pleasure: is it a feeling or an attitude? Is it excited engagement during activities, or satisfaction and contentment at their completion? Pleasure also plays fundamental explanatory roles in psychology, neuroscience, and animal behavior. I draw on this work to argue that pleasure picks out two distinct, but interacting neurobiological systems with long evolutionary histories. Understanding pleasure as having these two facets gives us a better account of pleasure and explains the (...) persistent tensions in the concept. This account of pleasure also sheds light on happiness and well-being. (shrink)

This study examines the philosophical question of how it is possible to appreciate music aesthetically as an expressive art form. First it examines a number of general theories that seek to make sense of expressiveness as a characteristic of music that can be considered relevant to our aesthetic appreciation of the latter. These include accounts that focus on resemblances between music and human behaviour or human feelings, on music's powers of emotional arousal, and on various ways in which music may (...) be imaginatively construed by listeners. It argues that none of these are entirely satisfactory. Then it proposes an alternative account, focusing on what is involved when our appreciation of music as an expressive art is informed by our awareness of it as something that is expressively interpreted in performance. It is claimed that this offers the basis for a better understanding of at least some aspects of expressiveness in music and its relevance to aesthetic appreciation. (shrink)

In this article I show that although biological and neuropsychological factors enable and constrain the construction of music, culture is implicated on every level at which we can indicate an emotion-music connection. Nevertheless, music encourages an affective sense of human affiliation and security, facilitating feelings of transcultural solidarity.

Experimental investigations of cross-cultural music perception and cognition reported during the past decade are described. As globalization and Western music homogenize the world musical environment, it is imperative that diverse music and musical contexts are documented. Processes of music perception include grouping and segmentation, statistical learning and sensitivity to tonal and temporal hierarchies, and the development of tonal and temporal expectations. The interplay of auditory, visual, and motor modalities is discussed in light of synchronization and the way music moves via (...) emotional response. Further research is needed to test deep-rooted psychological assumptions about music cognition with diverse materials and groups in dynamic contexts. Although empirical musicology provides keystones to unlock musical structures and organization, the psychological reality of those theorized structures for listeners and performers, and the broader implications for theories of music perception and cognition, awaits investigation. (shrink)

The aim of this work is to account for expressions like “Cantor’s diagonal proof is elegant” or “Euler identity is the most beautiful formula of mathematics”. This type of expressions is common among mathematicians; however, they may result in two kinds of puzzled reactions: first, the non mathematician may find the use of the word ‘beautiful’ strange in this context. Second, the mathematician may try to reinterpret mathematical beauty in terms of the principles and precepts of mathematics itself. I present (...) an account of mathematical beauty that offers a way to avoid these puzzled reactions: mathematical beauty is just a type of “normal” beauty and no reinterpretation is necessary. To support this claim, I devise an aesthetic theory -by using insights and findings from experimental psychology, neurology, philosophical and psychological theories of emotion in art, philosophy of music and philosophy of science- that shows that aesthetic judgments in mathematics are genuine aesthetic judgments. (shrink)

We disagree with Juslin & Vll's (J&V's) thesis that music-evoked emotions are indistinguishable from other emotions in both their nature and underlying mechanisms and that music just induces some emotions more frequently than others. Empirical evidence suggests that frequency differences reflect the specific nature of music-evoked emotions: aesthetic and reactive rather than utilitarian and proactive. Additional mechanisms and determinants are suggested as predictors of emotions triggered by music.

The mechanisms proposed in the target article are quite general and do not address variables specific for music. I argue that reactions to music include motivational mechanisms related to functions of music. To further the field, as the authors envision, consideration of internal mechanisms must be paired with specific hypotheses that include musical and musically relevant variables.

Most commentators have agreed with our thesis, that musical emotions cannot be studied without regard to underlying mechanisms. However, some commentators have expressed concerns that are addressed in this response. Others have suggested directions for future research. Topics discussed in our response include terminology, elaborations on particular mechanisms, possible additional mechanisms, ways of distinguishing among emotions and mechanisms, the prevalence of musical emotions, the relationship between perceived and felt emotions, developmental issues, and evolutionary perspectives. We end our response with a (...) plea for researchers to reach beyond the traditional disputes in the field to pave the way for more theory-driven studies that can facilitate a deeper understanding of musical emotions. (shrink)

In questa nota si fornisce un esempio preliminare di analisi pragmatica delle strutture musicali. Nell’analisi, la stipulazione di una pragmatica musicale segue strettamente recenti proposte presentate in ambito semantico, in cui si illustrano le potenziali virtù rappresentazionali delle strutture musicali. In particolare, in questa nota si suggerisce la presenza di strategie di ricostruzione dei significati musicali le quali intervengono a prevenire la realizzazione di contenuti semantici contraddittori. L’evidenza utilizzata è ricavata da alcune misure del madrigale primo del II libro dei (...) madrigali di Monteverdi (1590), e dal testo (di T. Tasso) che le accompagna; sviluppi dell’analisi qui proposta dovranno fondarsi su evidenze indipendenti e auspicabilmente naturali. (shrink)

In this essay, Timothy Justus reviews the book Brain and Music (2012) by Stefan Koelsch, first providing a sketch of the book’s contents, including examples of Koelsch’s empirical work from four core areas (1) musical syntax, (2) musical semantics, (3) music and action, and (4) music and emotion. Justus then proceeds to discuss the continuous nature of cognitive domains and the continuous nature of mental activity.

It does not typically seem to be worthwhile rewatching a sport match, for example, in a video recording, once the result is known. Sports matches are like detective stories. Once one knows ‘whodunit’, there seems little point in revisiting the tale. By drawing on an argument from musicologist Edward T. Cone, this paper argues that certain sports matches may be revisited with profit. The initial experience of a game may be of a series of events that are often ambiguous or (...) confusing as to their meaning or purpose. The full appreciation of a sport match requires, not just this initial familiarity with the immediately perceived events of the game, but also an awareness of the tactics being deployed by both sides. An understanding of tactics and strategy is akin to the analysis of a piece of music. A further viewing of the game, during which one can appreciate how the tactics inform the events naively experienced in the first viewing, will yield, it will be argued, an aesthetic pleasure. This takes the experience of sport beyond the merely entertaining or exciting. In certain games, the third viewing may also transcend an appreciation of the merely formal qualities of the game, and so offer substantial insights into what it is to be human. (shrink)

Music is universal at least partly because it expresses emotion and regulates affect. Associations between music and emotion have been examined regularly by music psychologists. Here, we review recent findings in three areas: the communication and perception of emotion in music, the emotional consequences of music listening, and predictors of music preferences.

How do listeners learn about the statistical regularities underlying musical harmony? In traditional Western music, certain chords predict the occurrence of other chords: Given a particular chord, not all chords are equally likely to follow. In Experiments 1 and 2, we investigated whether adults make use of statistical information when learning new musical structures. Listeners were exposed to a novel musical system containing phrases generated using an artificial grammar. This new system contained statistical structure quite different from Western tonal music. (...) Our results suggest that learners take advantage of the statistical patterning of chords to acquire new musical structures, similar to learning processes previously observed for language learning. (shrink)

In this study, we explored how the modality would affect the input, visuo-motor coordination, and execution in the advanced pianist's sight-reading processes, as well as relations among these three phases. Thirty-two advanced pianists with 5–54 years of piano training participated in the study. All participants sight-read three two-voice pieces in either major or minor mode while their eye movements were measured by an eye-tracking device. All pieces were 20-measure long written in 4/4 m, adapted from unfamiliar Baroque pieces. Results showed (...) that sight-readers fixated more frequently and tended to spend more time performing in a minor score than in a major score. This implies that modality of a score affects an efficiency of input and visuo-motor coordination in the advanced pianist's sight-reading. Spearman's correlation coefficients showed that errors were correlated positively with the number of fixations and the duration of performance. These results add more evidence to the notion that efficiencies in input and visuo-motor coordination are related to the accuracy in execution. (shrink)