How do location and control over the music influence listeners’ responses?

This study uses Mehrabian and Russell's ( 1974 ) Pleasure‐Arousal‐Dominance (PAD) model to consider how responses to both the music heard and overall in‐situ listening experience are influenced by the listener's degree of control over music selected for a particular listening episode and the location in which the listening takes place. Following recruitment via campus advertisements and a university research participation program, 216 individuals completed a background questionnaire and music listening task in a 3 (location) × 2 (experimenter‐ or participant‐selected music) design. After the listening task, participants completed a short questionnaire concerning the music they heard and the overall in‐situ listening experience. Results demonstrated that there was a positive relationship between control and liking for the music and episode, whether the former was considered in terms of: (1) whether the music was self‐selected or experimenter‐selected or (2) overt ratings of perceived control. Furthermore, the location and liking for the music were related to people's judgments of their enjoyment of the overall experience. This research indicates that the PAD model is a useful framework for understanding everyday music listening and supports the contention that, in a musical context, dominance may be operationalized as control over the music.     

Raiding the inarticulate: The internal analytic setting and listening beyond countertransference

The analytic setting exists not only externally but also internally as a structure in the mind of the analyst. The internal analytic setting constitutes an area of the analyst's mind where reality is defined by unconscious symbolic meaning. Clinical examples illustrate how a secure internal setting allows flexibility in the external setting without sacrifice of its analytic quality. The internal setting can help analysts listen inwardly to themselves in a way that is free-floating with regard to their internal processes. This points beyond usual ideas of countertransference. An analytic encounter may stir up elements that belong to the analyst's psyche which, rather than impeding the analysis, can actively enrich it. Seamus Heaney's writings evoke comparisons between listening to poems and listening to patients, and a week in a patient's analysis is described in relation to these themes.     

Consultation in adolescence: Hurried,terminable, interminable1

The physiological ambivalence displayed by adolescents towards dependence on adults is an obstacle, at least initially, to a course of psychotherapy. A consultation is often the only thing that can be offered to start with, and constitutes an essential stage even for those teenagers who go on to prove themselves able to benefi t from therapy or analysis. The way this fi rst meeting is handled is therefore crucial. The author investigates the diffi culties and paradoxes of this consultation, the particular nature of the ‘time’ of the consultation compared to that of therapy, and the different internal attitude this requires of the analyst. She thus identifi es two separate confi gurations‐a hurried consultation and an interminable consultation‐which can result when the consultation fails in its primary objectives. Both are connected with possible collusive elements in the professional linked to specifi c adolescent angst. The very detailed account of a consultation shows the ‘journey’ made by a 14 year‐old starting from her urgent request to be freed from a symptom experienced as an incomprehensible obstacle, to her gradual development of curiosity towards herself and towards her own mental and emotional make‐up, resulting in her acceptance of therapeutic treatment, which would initially have been impossible.     

The influence of visual information on auditory lateralization

Sætrevik, B. (2010). The influence of visual information on auditory lateralization. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology. The classic McGurk study showed that presentation of one syllable in the visual modality simultaneous with a different syllable in the auditory modality creates the perception of a third, not presented syllable. The current study presented dichotic syllable pairs (one in each ear) simultaneously with video clips of a mouth pronouncing the syllables from one of the ears, or pronouncing a syllable that was not part of the dichotic pair. When asked to report the auditory stimuli, responses were shifted towards selecting the auditory stimulus from the side that matched the visual stimulus.     

Radical Listening: Transdisciplinarity,Restorative Justice and Change

This article explores transdisciplinarity within childhood studies at the intersection of restorative justice and counseling psychology. It is argued that at this juncture the nexus of radical listening may be uncovered. Radical listening, a term first coined by the critical pedagogue J.L. Kincheloe, is used here to aid in the project of both decolonizing restorative justice practices and deconstructing the hegemonic positioning of psychology in childhood studies through an intersectional understanding of childhood. This is a move toward complexity thinking and a valuing of Indigenous ways of knowing in response to the epistemicide of minoritized voices and the domination of White Western scholarship in childhood studies over the past century. Linkages established among transdisciplinarity, restorative justice, and counseling reorients the scholar/practitioner toward a nuanced understanding of a rights-based perspective and an appreciation of the intersections of social, political, and cultural worlds.     

Manual motor reaction while being absorbed into popular music

In three experiments, we investigated the behavioral consequences of being absorbed into music on performance in a concurrent task. We tested two competing hypotheses: Based on a cognitive load account, captivation of attention by the music and state absorption might slow down reactions in the decisional task. Alternatively, music could induce spontaneous motor activity, and being absorbed in music might result in a more autonomous, flow-driven behavior with quicker motor reactions. Participants performed a simple, visual, two-alternative forced-choice task while listening to popular musical excerpts. Subsequently, they rated their subjective experience using a short questionnaire. We presented music in four tempo categories (between 80 and 140 BPM) to account for a potential effect of tempo and an interaction between tempo and absorption. In Experiment 1, absorption was related to decreased reaction times (RTs) in the visual task. This effect was small, as expected in this setting, but replicable in Experiment 2. There was no effect of the music’s tempo on RTs but a tendency of mind wandering to relate to task performance. After slightly changing the study setting in Experiment 3, flow predicted decreased RTs, but absorption alone — as part of the flow construct — did not predict RTs. To sum up, we demonstrated that being absorbed in music can have the behavioral consequence of speeded manual reactions in specific task contexts, and people seem to integrate the music into an active, flow-driven and therefore enhanced performance. However, shown relations depend on task settings, and a systematic study of context is necessary to understand how induced states and their measurement contribute to the findings.     

The impact of sales contests on customer listening: an empirical study in a telesales context

Companies often use sales contests to achieve short-term objectives to motivate salespeople and to boost sales. However, sales contests also may encourage salespeople to adopt less relational behaviors and limit their ability to manage customer relationships, as manifested in their customer listening practices. Therefore, this study, based on a natural field experiment, examines the effects of a sales contest on customer listening. In so doing, four dimensions of customer listening (passive, active, adaptive, and assertive listening), associated with a process of listening (Hearing, Processing, and Responding), were identified. The study helps clarify the effect of a sales contest on these four dimensions of customer listening by telesales agents. The results reveal that this sales contest exerts negative effects only on the active and passive customer listening, not on the adaptive and assertive customer listening. The study sheds light on how sales contests influence important behaviors such as customer listening, as well as on the nature of customer listening itself.     

The experience of receiving scholarship aid and its effect on future giving: a listening guide analysis

Why are there so many people who receive scholarship aid who do not give back to the schools that gave it? Social exchange theories grounded in the assumption of direct reciprocity have long been the framework used within higher education to understand donative behavior. As a result, conventional wisdom within higher education holds that recipients of scholarship aid will later donate money to the institution that provided it. However, the philanthropic data show that most aid recipients do not, in fact, give back. This study probes the underlying factors for this phenomenon by using the Listening Guide, a voice-centered relational method of discovery, to analyze and interpret interviews with 10 scholarship recipients. By providing a more robust understanding of the experience of receiving, the findings challenge some of the most basic psychological and sociological assumptions about giving and generosity within higher education.     

Hemispheric asymmetry effects in children studied by dichotic listening and visual half-field testing

Dichotic listening (DL) and visual half-field (VHF) testing were used to study hemisphere asymmetry in a developmental perspective. Five-, 8-, and 11-year-old children were presented lists of fused words using a DL technique in Experiment 1, and 8- and 11-year-old children were presented pictures of common objects using a VHF technique in Experiment 2. In both experiments, measures of identification, free recall, and recognition of the words/pictures were employed. The results revealed effects of ear input (right-ear advantage) and half-field presentation (right visual half-field advantage) for all age groups, although the magnitude of this lateralization effect differed between the three memory measures. The results are discussed in relation to developmental aspects of language laterality, and in relation to the clinical utility of non-invasive lateralization techniques.     

ON THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT OF PSYCHOANALYTIC FIELD THEORY,PART 2

Advances in Contemporary Psychoanalytic Field Theory: Concept and Further Development. Edited by S. Montana Katz, Roosevelt Cassorla, and Giuseppe Civitarese. London/New York: Routledge, 2017. 212 pp.