Processing emotions in sounds: cross-domain aftereffects of vocal utterances and musical sounds

Nonlinguistic signals in the voice and musical instruments play a critical role in communicating emotion. Although previous research suggests a common mechanism for emotion processing in music and speech, the precise relationship between the two domains is unclear due to the paucity of direct evidence. By applying the adaptation paradigm developed by Bestelmeyer, Rouger, DeBruine, and Belin [2010. Auditory adaptation in vocal affect perception. Cognition, 117(2), 217–223. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2010.08.008], this study shows cross-domain aftereffects from vocal to musical sounds. Participants heard an angry or fearful sound four times, followed by a test sound and judged whether the test sound was angry or fearful. Results show cross-domain aftereffects in one direction – vocal utterances to musical sounds, not vice-versa. This effect occurred primarily for angry vocal sounds. It is argued that there is a unidirectional relationship between vocal and musical sounds where emotion processing of vocal sounds encompasses musical sounds but not vice-versa.     

Musical expertise has minimal impact on dual task performance

Studies investigating effect of practice on dual task performance have yielded conflicting findings, thus supporting different theoretical accounts about the organisation of attentional resources when tasks are performed simultaneously. Because practice has been proven to reduce the demand of attention for the trained task, the impact of long-lasting training on one task is an ideal way to better understand the mechanisms underlying dual task decline in performance. Our study compared performance during dual task execution in expert musicians compared to controls with little if any musical experience. Participants performed a music recognition task and a visuo-spatial task separately (single task) or simultaneously (dual task). Both groups showed a significant but similar performance decline during dual tasks. In addition, the two groups showed a similar decline of dual task performance during encoding and retrieval of the musical information, mainly attributed to a decline in sensitivity. Our results suggest that attention during dual tasks is similarly distributed by expert and non-experts. These findings are in line with previous studies showing a lack of sensitivity to difficulty and lack of practice effect during dual tasks, supporting the idea that different tasks may rely on different and not-sharable attentional resources.     

The language used in describing autobiographical memories prompted by life period visually presented verbal cues,event-specific visually presented verbal cues and short musical clips of popular music

Here, we examined linguistic differences in the reports of memories produced by three cueing methods. Two groups of young adults were cued visually either by words representing events or popular cultural phenomena that took place when they were 5, 10, or 16 years of age, or by words referencing a general lifetime period word cue directing them to that period in their life. A third group heard 30-second long musical clips of songs popular during the same three time periods. In each condition, participants typed a specific event memory evoked by the cue and these typed memories were subjected to analysis by the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) program. Differences in the reports produced indicated that listening to music evoked memories embodied in motor-perceptual systems more so than memories evoked by our word-cueing conditions. Additionally, relative to music cues, lifetime period word cues produced memories with reliably more uses of personal pronouns, past tense terms, and negative emotions. The findings provide evidence for the embodiment of autobiographical memories, and how those differ when the cues emphasise different aspects of the encoded events.     

The impact of music on learning and consolidation of novel words

Music can be a powerful mnemonic device, as shown by a body of literature demonstrating that listening to text sung to a familiar melody results in better memory for the words compared to conditions where they are spoken. Furthermore, patients with a range of memory impairments appear to be able to form new declarative memories when they are encoded in the form of lyrics in a song, while unable to remember similar materials after hearing them in the spoken modality. Whether music facilitates the acquisition of completely new information, such as new vocabulary, remains unknown. Here we report three experiments in which adult participants learned novel words in the spoken or sung modality. While we found no benefit of musical presentation on free recall or recognition memory of novel words, novel words learned in the sung modality were more strongly integrated in the mental lexicon compared to words learned in the spoken modality. This advantage for the sung words was only present when the training melody was familiar. The impact of musical presentation on learning therefore appears to extend beyond episodic memory and can be reflected in the emergence and properties of new lexical representations.     

Music is awesome: Influences of emotion,personality, and preference on experienced awe

Awe is a complex, cognitive–conceptual emotion associated with transcendence and wonder. Music has the power to create this kind of transcendence. Can music evoke awe? Previous research demonstrates that awe is associated with individual differences in personality such as openness. This study examined whether different kinds of music across a wide variety of genres can evoke awe and whether the experience of awe depends on individual differences. The study further investigated the relationship of awe to patterns of emotional responses to different dimensions of musical genre. Study 1 demonstrated that high need for cognition and low cognitive closure predicted awe for reflective and complex music, that felt happiness predicted awe for all kinds of music, and that perceived happiness and sadness predicted awe only for reflective and complex music. Study 2 replicated the finding that perceived sadness can evoke awe in reflective and complex music and further demonstrated that experienced musical awe correlates with individual differences in the tendency to experience awe more generally. These results are of interest to advertisers interested in evoking awe with music and marketers interested in segmenting to target the appropriate populations for this purpose.     

Heavy metal Muslims: the rise of a post-Islamist public sphere

This article explores the emergence of new, youth-oriented public spheres in the Middle East and North Africa through the lens of the burgeoning extreme music scenes across the region. I argue that the seeming incongruity of genres such as extreme heavy metal or gangsta rap becoming popular in the Muslim world is a reminder of the diversity of contemporary Islam; more deeply, it reveals that the borders between religious belief and seemingly secular practices in Muslim societies are increasingly porous, with politically marginalized young metalheads and their more activist religious peers sharing many of the same societal goals. These are greater autonomy and even democracy, the right for tolerance of divergent views, and the rejection of the hypocrisy, corruption and authoritarianism of their leaders. I conclude with an analysis of the political implications of a still tentative rapprochement between ostensibly secular artists and the religious forces who less than a decade ago were spearheading their persecution, and in some cases prosecution, across the region.     

An Existential Perspective of Body Beliefs and Health Assessment

Successful health assessments are ongoing and rely on a clinician/client interaction, which is influenced by both the client’s and the clinician’s beliefs about their bodies. These beliefs about the human body arise out of religious and cultural contexts. Theories often explain cultural context by comparison of differences and similarities between the client and the clinician and/or between the client and the dominant culture. This approach can carry a bias inherent in the comparison to dominant beliefs held by those with the most power and economic advantage. The author suggests an existential approach in which client and clinician bodies interact each as adept, autonomous individuals with a conglomerate of beliefs about body and health.The author is an Interdisciplinary PhD candidate in Music Therapy and Health Psychology at the University of Missouri-Kansas City Conservatory of Music. Her research goals include the interrelationship of music, spirituality, and cardiovascular health. She is a Board Certified music therapist and has served in that capacity since 1980 in mental health facilities, hospice, and private practice.     

The influence of alexithymia and music on the incidental memory for emotion words

Alexithymia is a multifaceted personality construct which encompasses difficulties in identifying and expressing feelings along with an externally oriented cognitive style. We investigated whether congruent vs. incongruent emotional musical priming (happy and angry music) during encoding would moderate the effects of alexithymia on recognition rates. We found that high alexithymia scorers recognized fewer joy and anger words than low scorers. Angry music decreased recognition rates in high alexithymia scorers compared to low alexithymia scorers. The congruency and incongruency effects between music and words depended on alexithymia level. The anger deficit in high alexithymia scorers and the possible support provided by happiness cues are discussed. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

孔、孟“乐”理念比较研究

本文对孔子和孟子的"乐"理念的各自特点及其异同之处进行了初步分析和评价。作者认为,孔子的"乐"理念具有明显的泛伦理化倾向。他所关注和注重的,乃是"乐"的社会教化、社会整合的伦理调节功能。孔子视"礼""仁"为"乐"之魂魄,视"至善"为"乐"之归宿和极致。"乐"的艺术审美特质被淡化和边缘化。孟子对孔子"乐"理念的最大修正,在于他将其"民本"的政治诉求贯彻于其"乐"理念之中,诉诸"与民同乐"的政治氛围,从而将"乐"理念平等化、平民化、感性化,扬弃了孔子对"乐"的种种宗法等级束缚,破除了对"乐"的雅俗之别的偏见,从而使"乐"理念向其平等的、感性的审美氛围迈出了重要的一步。同孔子泛伦理化的"乐"理念相比较,孟子的"乐"理念则具有泛政治化的理论倾向。     

Music interferes with learning from television during infancy

Infants are frequently exposed to music during daily activities, including free play, and while viewing infant‐directed videotapes that contain instrumental music soundtracks. In Experiment 1, an instrumental music soundtrack was played during a live or televised demonstration to examine its effects on deferred imitation by 6‐, 12‐, and 18‐month‐old infants. Transfer of information was indexed via deferred imitation of the target actions following a 24‐h delay. For half the infants, the music context was also reinstated at the time of test. Performance by experimental groups was compared to that of a baseline control group that participated in the test session without prior exposure to the demonstration. Imitation performance was above baseline for the live groups but not for the video groups regardless of age or the music context at test. In Experiment 2, we added matched sound effects to the video demonstration and infants performed above baseline. We conclude that the music track creates additional cognitive load, disrupts selective attention to the target actions and inhibits transfer of learning from television of the imitation task. Music may impair an infant's ability to translate information from a two‐dimensional to three‐dimensional world even if the auditory context remains the same. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.