Music Psychology

Modes of music listening and modes of subjectivity in everyday life

by Ruth Herbert

Journal of Sonic Studies, Vol. 2(1), May 2012
Available online

Technologically mediated solitary listening now constitutes the prevalent mode of musical engagement in the... more Technologically mediated solitary listening now constitutes the prevalent mode of musical engagement in the Industrialized West. Music is heard in a variety of real-world contexts, and qualities of subjective experience might similarly be expected to be wide-ranging. Yet though much is known about function (music as a behavioural resource) less research has focused on ways in which music mediates consciousness. This essay critiques conceptualizations of music listening in extant literature and explores how listening to music in daily life both informs and reflects subjectivity.

Psychological and musicological literature on music listening commonly distinguishes between autonomous and heteronomous ways of listening, associating the former with unusual and the latter with mundane, habitual listening scenarios. Empirical findings from my research, which used ethnographic methods to tap qualities of subjective experience, indicate that attentive and diffused listening do not map neatly onto 'special' and 'ordinary' contexts and that a distributed, fluctuating attentional awareness and multimodal focus are central to many experiences of hearing music.

Music study and intervention quality assessment scale (Musiquas) 1st Edition

by Artur C. Jaschke

co-authored with Dr. Laura H.P. Eggermont
Department of Clinical Neuropsychology, VU University Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Quality assessment of studies is essential for the understanding and application in systematic reviews and meta... more Quality assessment of studies is essential for the understanding and application in systematic reviews and meta analyses. Publications in scientific journals have extensively used assessment scales to address poor methodological quality, forming inclusion criteria or determine sensitivity controls. Even though these assessments are commonplace in science publications, there is no scale, which assesses the quality of studies in the vast amount of music related sciences.

The Music study and intervention quality assessment scale (Musiquas) addresses this issue, providing a 10-point rating, whereas studies are judged on four broad perspectives: Selection, Control criteria, Exposure and Outcome.
Musiquas is based on the widely used Newcastle-Ottawa Scale (NOS) for assessing the quality of nonrandomized studies in meta-analyses (Wells et al, 2011) and was attuned by the authors to fit the demand of quality assessment in music studies and interventions.

Musiquas was piloted in a systematic review on the relationship of music and the transfer effect (Jaschke, Eggermont & Scherder, expected 2012) and its evaluation and validation is currently in progress.


Contact details: Drs A.C. Jaschke, Department of Clinical Neuropsychology, VU University Amsterdam, The Netherlands, van der Boechorststraat 1, Room: 1D-26, 1081 BT Amsterdam, The Netherlands

e-mail: a.c.jaschke@vu.nl

The scale is available for download through the below [Download (.pdf)] button

Copyright 2012 VU University Amsterdam. All rights reserved

On the Nature and Nurture of Musical Intelligence: Towards an Enactive Approach

by Dylan Van Der Schyff

This paper discusses the nature-nurture issue in the context of human musicality. A brief but critical examination is... more This paper discusses the nature-nurture issue in the context of human musicality. A brief but critical examination is offered of the position that sees intelligence and talent as fixed and largely genetically determined for each individual. Following this, a number of alternative approaches are examined that view cognitive development as a process of enactive learning within an environment. The influence of these ‘constructivist’ approaches on subsequent theories of musical development is examined. The enactive approach is then considered from a bio-cognitive perspective; and it is shown how this view offers a means by which human musicality––or ‘musical intelligence’––may be discussed in non-dualistic terms. It is argued that because the enactive bio-cognitive approach collapses the nature-nurture, mind-world, lower-higher cognition dualisms it opens up interesting new models of the human bio-cognitive and socio-cultural economies, thereby allowing us to form richer and more complete accounts of the wide variety of behaviors and phenomena we group under the word music.

What is the rationale for music in a Children’s Centre? - Proceedings MERYC Conference Helsinki 2011

by Jessica Pitt

Abstract
Musicians have been working in Children’s Centres for over ten years, and early studies found that music... more Abstract
Musicians have been working in Children’s Centres for over ten years, and early studies found that music teachers were adapting their established teaching approaches in order to meet these particular needs (MacKenzie & 2008; Young, 2007) With a Centre now located in every community, and with the majority offering music sessions for families, this study seeks to understand the rationale behind choosing music as part of a Centre’s programme of activities. It also investigates the effects of group music making on parents, children, and the ‘community of practice’ surrounding this activity. Many externally-funded, early years music project evaluations highlight the benefits of music participation for parents in terms of raised self-esteem and confidence (Lonie, 2010). Gudmundsdottir (2010) found higher than expected scores in the subjective mental wellbeing of mothers attending music classes together with their young children. This paper presents some preliminary findings from an exploratory pilot study carried out in a children’s centre in the east of England.
The methodology comprises semi-structured interviews, using open-ended questions, undertaken with professionals and parents. The themes emerging from the analysis of the data have been used to generate main themes for a questionnaire survey which forms part of a series of subsequent studies. The initial findings provide evidence of the contribution that music makes to the cultural world of children and their families. Musicians are developing new ways of working as part of multi- professional teams, using music as a tool for engagement and interaction.
Keywords
music, Children’s Centres, parent-child, group music activities

Stability of tempo perception in music listening

by Eleni Lapidaki

STABILITY OF TEMPO JUDGMENTS WHILE LISTENING TO MUSIC?

by Eleni Lapidaki

LEARNING FROM MASTERS OF MUSIC CREATIVITY

by Eleni Lapidaki

Re-defining ‘Me’: Exploring career transition and the experience of loss in the context of redundancy for professional opera choristers

by Paul Flowers

Jane Oakland, Raymond A. MacDonald and
Paul Flowers

This paper presents an in-depth, qualitative investigation into the impact of job loss for seven opera choristers. The... more This paper presents an in-depth, qualitative investigation into the impact of job loss for seven opera choristers. The paper focuses on their perception of this loss and how this perception influences the experience of career transition and subsequent redefinition of the self. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis is used to highlight the individual nature of dealing with loss and transition. Discussion centres on three themes which best capture the psychological process involved in the renegotiation of self for
the participants. Analysis shows that a key issue in adapting to career transition is re-defining what it means to be a singer without the validation of full-time employment. The Organismic Valuing Theory of growth after adversity (Joseph & Linley, 2005) is used as a framework within which to discuss individual
fluctuations between searching to develop new areas of the self and restoring the established self. The study concludes that singers are unique in the employment market because of their relationship to their embodied voice. For the seven participants, the experience of career disruption is determined by their
ability to re-evaluate the role of singing as a primary agent of self-formation.

(Un)touched by Words: Psychoanalytic writing on Music and Musical aspect of Psychoanalysis

by Odelia Hitron

Published in Ma’arag: The Israel Annual of Psychoanalysis, 2011, Volume 2 (pp. 55-82). © 2011 Magnes Press/The Sigmund Freud Center, The Hebrew University

(UN)TOUCHED BY WORDS:PSYCHOANALYTIC WRITINGS ON MUSIC AND MUSICAL ASPECTS OF PSYCHOANALYSIS


ODELIA... more (UN)TOUCHED BY WORDS:PSYCHOANALYTIC WRITINGS ON MUSIC AND MUSICAL ASPECTS OF PSYCHOANALYSIS


ODELIA HITRON

This essay reviews the development and changes in psychoanalysis’ theoretical account of music, in an attempt to better understand the nature of the relations between the two as art, science and technique. I attempt to recount the slow process by which music has been transformed from being perceived as an "opponent" of psychoanalysis, to being seen as it’s complementary.
In my review, I show how the early Freudian perspective conspicuously failed to refer to music – that is, to take it up as a subject of study – since the type and quality of the psychic excitements that are generated by music could not be accounted for in classical psychoanalysis’ content-oriented and symbol-seeking investigations. This conceptual discrepancy necessarily led to a conflict, one which manifested as disinterest and/or ignorance.
With the establishment of ego psychology this began to change, as its expanded theoretization of the mechanisms of sublimation was better able to formulate a number of important concepts in respect to the various functions of music. This approach pointed out formal similarities between the psychical structure of primary and secondary processes, and the respective musical structure of a primary rhythmical layer and a secondary melodic layer, which, in turn, made it possible to speak about the unique character of the therapist’s listening faculty, which makes him or her attuned to each of these layers.
Soon after, object relations theories, and especially Donald W. Winnicott’s theory concerning the relations between creativity, being and formlessness, provided a the framework for further and firmer theoretization of the role of music within these processes. In my view, this aspect of Winnicott’s work constitutes the point of transition leading to what was later to develop into recognition of the musical dimension inherent to the field of psychoanalysis. This recognition of the musical components of therapy gives us the opportunity to examine not just their form, but also their content and meaning. It is only by establishing the relations between them, and by viewing them as irrevocably mixed, that we understand them both properly. Only in that manner can the “music” of psychoanalytic therapy be “touched” by words.
_______________
© 2011 Magnes Press/The Sigmund Freud Center, The Hebrew University
Ma’arag: The Israel Annual of Psychoanalysis, 2011, Volume 2 (pp. 55-82).

Performing your self? Autonomy and self-expression in the work of jazz musicians and classical string players

by Melissa Dobson

Music Performance Research, Special Issue: Music and Health, 3(1), 42-60 (2010).

Insecurity, professional sociability, and alcohol: Young freelance musicians' perspectives on work and life in the music profession

by Melissa Dobson

Psychology of Music, 39(2), 240-260 (2011).

Classical cult or learning community? Exploring new audience members’ social and musical responses to first-time concert attendance

by Melissa Dobson

Co-authored with Stephanie E. Pitts, Ethnomusicology Forum, 20(3), 353–383 (2011). Available from: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17411912.2011.641717

Music and affordances

by Luke Windsor

Co-Authored with Christophe de Bézenac, to appear in Musicae Scientiae. Published online before print February 17, 2012, doi: 10.1177/1029864911435734

This paper explores the extent to which ideas developed in The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems and further... more This paper explores the extent to which ideas developed in The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems and further refined in The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception (Gibson, 1966; 1979) can be applied to the analysis of perception and action in musical settings. The ecological approach to perception has rarely been applied to music, although some recent work in ecological acoustics, music theory and music psychology has begun to show an interest in direct perception of events and objects. We would argue that despite this pioneering work, Gibson’s most radical and controversial idea, that of the direct perception of affordances (Gibson, 1979), has not been adequately addressed in a musical context. Following an introduction to the theoretical background to affordances and a review of the ways in which previous authors have investigated ecological approaches to auditory perception, we show how both the production and perception of music can fruitfully be analysed using the concept of affordances, and how such an approach neatly integrates seemingly active and passive engagement with music. In addition, we place this ecological approach to music within a broader empirical context, giving examples of music-psychological, ethnomusicological and neuroscientific evidence which complement our more theoretical approach. In conclusion, we argue that the links between the performance, composition and reception are underpinned by the mutuality of perception and action.

The Effects of Musical Training on Verbal Memory

by Katherine Moore

Franklin, Rattray, Moore, Moher, Yip and Jonides (2008), Psychology of Music

Who enjoys listening to sad music and why?

by Jonna Vuoskoski

Published February 2012 in Music Perception, 29 (3), 311-317. Co-authors: William F. Thompson, Doris McIlwain, and Tuomas Eerola.

Although people generally avoid negative emotional experiences in general, they often enjoy sadness portrayed in music... more Although people generally avoid negative emotional experiences in general, they often enjoy sadness portrayed in music and other arts. The present study investigated what kinds of subjective emotional experiences are induced in listeners by sad music, and whether the tendency to enjoy sad music is associated with particular personality traits. One hundred forty-eight participants listened to 16 music excerpts and rated their emotional responses. As expected, sadness was the most salient emotion experienced in response to sad excerpts. However, other more positive and complex emotions such as nostalgia, peacefulness, and wonder were also evident. Furthermore, two personality traits – Openness to Experience and Empathy – were associated with liking for sad music and with the intensity of emotional responses induced by sad music, suggesting that aesthetic appreciation and empathetic engagement play a role in the enjoyment of sad music.

Constituting the musical object: a neurophenomenological perspective on musical research

by Andrea Schiavio

submitted

Despite an apparent common agreement on the impossibility to define correctly the complex phenomenon of music, some... more Despite an apparent common agreement on the impossibility to define correctly the complex phenomenon of music, some authors continue to look explicitly for a strict definition, while other contributors assume implicitly a predefined notion of music, often based on a modular conception of the mind/brain. While musical analysis and standard musicology focus on the objectiveness of the musical material, some trends in psychology of music consider only the neural correlates of specific musical abilities. As those perspectives study distinctly subjective and objective aspects of musicality, the main goal of this paper is to provide a different approach for musical investigation, considering the relation between music and the perceiver/executer an inseparable feature of any musical experience. Analyzing the classical Husserlian position on intentionality, I will (i) introduce the pivotal notion of constitution of a musical object, (ii) consider the contributions of Merleau-Ponty and of the finding in cognitive neuroscience of a mirror mechanism of action understanding, and their implication for the concept of intentionality and (iii) claim that musical intentionality is a cross modal, but intrinsically motor, intentionality.

Can sad music really make you sad? Indirect measures of affective states induced by music and autobiographical memories

by Jonna Vuoskoski

Published (Online First) in Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts (2012). doi: 10.1037/a0026937. Co-author: Tuomas Eerola

The present study addressed music's disputed ability to induce genuine sadness in listeners by investigating whether... more The present study addressed music's disputed ability to induce genuine sadness in listeners by investigating whether listening to sad music can induce sadness-related effects on memory and judgment. Related aims were to explore how the different mechanisms of music-induced emotions are involved in sadness induced by familiar, self-selected music and unfamiliar, experimenter-selected music, and whether the susceptibility to music-induced sadness is associated with trait empathy. One hundred twenty participants were randomly assigned into four conditions with different tasks: listening to unfamiliar sad or neutral music, or to self-selected sad music, or recalling a sad autobiographical event and writing about it. The induced affective states were measured indirectly using a word recall task and a judgment task where participants rated the emotions expressed by pictures depicting facial expressions. The results indicate that listening to sad music can indeed induce changes in emotion-related memory and judgment. However, this effect depends, to some extent, on the music's relevance to the listener, as well as on the personality attributes of the listener. Trait empathy contributed to the susceptibility to sadness induced by unfamiliar music, while autobiographical memories contributed to sadness induced by self-selected music.

Effects of Spectral Features of Sound on Gesture Type and Timing

by Mariusz Kozak

Co-authored with Kristian Nymoen and Rolf Inge Godøy. Forthcoming, Spring 2012, in Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence.

In this paper we present results from an experiment in which infrared motion capture technology was used to record... more In this paper we present results from an experiment in which infrared motion capture technology was used to record participants’ movement in syn­chrony to different rhythms and different sounds. The purpose was to determine the effects of the sounds’ spectral and temporal features on synchronization and gesture characteristics. In particular, we focused on the correlation between sounds and three gesture features: maximum acceleration, discontinuity, and total quantity of motion. Our findings indicate that discrete, discontinuous motion resulted in better synchronization, while spectral features of sound had a significant effect on the quantity of motion.

An empirical study of normative dissociation in musical and non-musical everyday life experiences

by Ruth Herbert

Now available online,  in advance of publication in Psychology of Music

Dissociative experiences involving music have received little research attention outside the field of ethnomusicology.... more Dissociative experiences involving music have received little research attention outside the field of ethnomusicology. This paper examines the psychological characteristics of normative dissociation (detachment) across musical and non-musical experiences in ‘real world’, everyday settings. It draws upon a subset of data arising from an empirical project designed to compare transformative shifts of consciousness, with and without music in daily life, and the ways in which use of music may facilitate the processes of dissociation and absorption. Twenty participants kept unstructured diaries for two weeks, recording free descriptions of involving experiences of any kind as soon as possible after their occurrence. All descriptions were subsequently subjected to Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA).

Results suggest that dissociative experiences are a familiar occurrence in everyday life. Diary entries highlight an established practice of actively sought detachment from self, surroundings or activity, suggesting that, together with absorption, the processes of derealization (altered perception of surroundings) and depersonalization (detachment from self) constitute common means of self-regulation in daily life. Music emerges as a particularly versatile facilitator of dissociative experience because of its semantic ambiguity, portability, and the variety of ways in which it may mediate perception, so facilitating an altered relationship to self and environment.

An empirical study of normative dissociation in musical and non-musical everyday life experiences

by Ruth Herbert

Now available online,  in advance of publication in Psychology of Music

Dissociative experiences involving music have received little research attention outside the field of ethnomusicology.... more Dissociative experiences involving music have received little research attention outside the field of ethnomusicology. This paper examines the psychological characteristics of normative dissociation (detachment) across musical and non-musical experiences in ‘real world’, everyday settings. It draws upon a subset of data arising from an empirical project designed to compare transformative shifts of consciousness, with and without music in daily life, and the ways in which use of music may facilitate the processes of dissociation and absorption. Twenty participants kept unstructured diaries for two weeks, recording free descriptions of involving experiences of any kind as soon as possible after their occurrence. All descriptions were subsequently subjected to Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA).

Results suggest that dissociative experiences are a familiar occurrence in everyday life. Diary entries highlight an established practice of actively sought detachment from self, surroundings or activity, suggesting that, together with absorption, the processes of derealization (altered perception of surroundings) and depersonalization (detachment from self) constitute common means of self-regulation in daily life. Music emerges as a particularly versatile facilitator of dissociative experience because of its semantic ambiguity, portability, and the variety of ways in which it may mediate perception, so facilitating an altered relationship to self and environment.