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A blog on music cognition research

Henkjan Honing
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March 5, 2009
02:49 PM
924 views

What makes a theory compelling?*

by Henkjan Honing in Music Matters

Karl Popper was a philosopher of science that was very much interested in this question. He tried to distinguish 'science' from 'pseudoscience', but got more and more dissatisfied with the idea that the empirical method (supporting a theory with observations and experiments) could effectively mark this distinction. He sometimes used the example of astrology “with its stupendous mass of empirical evidence based on observation”, but also nuanced it by stating that “science often errs, and that pseudoscience may happen to stumble on the truth.” Next to his well-known work on falsification, Popper started to develop alternatives to determine the scientific status or quality of a theory. He wrote the complex yet intriguing sentence “confirmations [of a theory] should count only if they are the result of risky predictions; that is to say, if, unenlightened by the theory in question, we should have expected an event which was incompatible with the theory — an event which would have refuted the theory.” (Popper, 1963).Popper was especially thrilled with the result of Eddington’s eclipse observations, which in 1919 brought the first important confirmation of Einstein's theory of gravitation. It was the surprising consequence of this theory that light should bend in the presence of large, heavy objects (Einstein was apparently willing to drop his theory if this would not be the case). Independent of whether such a prediction turns out to be true or not, Popper considered it an important quality of ‘real science’ to make such ‘risky predictions’. Interesting thought, not?I still find this an intriguing idea. The notion of ‘risky’ or ‘surprising predictions’ might actually be the beginning of a fruitful alternative to existing model selection techniques, such as goodness-of-fit (which theory predicts the data best) and simplicity (which theory gives the simplest explanation). Also in music cognition measures like goodness-of-fit (r-squared, percentage variance accounted for, and other measures from the experimental psychology toolkit) are often used to confirm a theory. Nevertheless, it is non-trivial to think of theories that make surprising predictions. That is, a theory that predicts a yet unknown phenomenon as a consequence of the intrinsic structure of the theory itself. If you know of any, let me know!K. R. Popper (1963). Conjectures and Refutations. London: Routledge.* Repeated blog entry from July 23, 2007 (celebrating finalizing a research proposal with Jan-Willem Romeijn on these issues, hoping to be able to address these issues head-on ;-)... Read more »

K. R. Popper. (1963) Conjectures and Refutations . London: Routledge. DOI: http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/popper_falsification.html

April 19, 2009
03:56 PM
861 views

De do do do, de da da da?*

by Henkjan Honing in Music Matters

For a long time I thought of it as quite a peculiar phenomenon: grown-ups who, the moment they spot a baby, start talking in a curious dialect. A dialect that has unclear semantics, little or no grammar, and is full of exaggerated rhythmic and melodic diversions. Nevertheless, babies seem to love it. They react —cooing with pleasure—to melodies that are not unlike pop songs as ‘De do do do, de da da da’ of The Police or ‘La la la’ by Kylie Minoque. This babbling or, more formally, infant-direct speech (IDS) differs from normal adult speech by its high pitch, exaggerated melodic contours, slower tempo, and more rhythmic variation. A kind of ‘musilanguage’ indeed. It is a widespread phenomenon that is —as far as we know— present in all cultures and has more similarities than differences -- even when some characteristics of IDS conflict with the rules of the adult language (e.g. Chinese). So it seems quite unlikely that IDS is ‘just’ a preparation for language, until recently the most common interpretation. Laurel Trainor, and her team at McMaster University (Ontario, Canada), suggests that IDS is essentially a tool to communicate emotion. The decoding of the speech patterns into their emotional meaning is something infants can do easily, and long before they learn about language. In that sense, it seems likely that language makes use of faculties special to music instead of it being a side effect of language (as as suggested once by a well-known cognitive psychologist).Henkjan Honing (2008). De vergeten luisteraar [The Forgotten Listener] Boekman (77), 42-47* Repeated from June 6th, 2008.... Read more »

Henkjan Honing. (2008) De vergeten luisteraar [The Forgotten lLstener]. Boekman, 42-47. DOI: http://www.hum.uva.nl/mmm/papers/Honing-2008a.pdf

December 15, 2008
03:08 AM
846 views

Does rhythm make our bodies move?*

by Henkjan Honing in Music Matters

Why do some people dance more rhythmically to music than others? Are these differences genetically or culturally determined? These are some typical questions journalists who are interested in rhythm research like to ask.The link between musical rhythm and movement has been a fascination for a small yet passionate group of researchers. Early examples, from the 1920s, are the works by Alexander Truslit and Gustav Becking. More recently researchers like Neil Todd (University of Manchester, England) [1] defend a view that makes a direct link between musical rhythm and movement. Direct in the sense that it is argued that rhythm perception can be explained in terms of our physiology and body metrics (from the functioning of our vestibular system to leg length and body size).While this might be a natural line of thought for most people, the consequences of such theories are peculiar. They predict, for instance, that body length will have an effect on our rhythm perception, longer people preferring slower musical tempi (or rates), shorter people preferring faster ones. Hence, females (since they are on average shorter than men) should have a preference for faster tempi as compared to males.To me that is too direct and naïve a relation. There are quite a few studies that looked for these direct physiological relations (like heart rate, spontaneous tapping rate, walking speed, etc.) and how these might influence or even determine rhythm perception. However, none of these succeeded in finding a convincing correlation, let alone a causal relation. In addition, they ignore the influence that culture and cognition apparently have on rhythm perception. Nevertheless it should be added that embodied explanations do form a healthy alternative to the often too restricted ‘mentalist’ or cognitive approach.An intriguing study in that respect was done by Jessica Phillips-Silver and Laurel Trainor (McMaster University, Canada) [2] a few years ago. They did an inventive experiment with seven month old babies, and showed that body movement (i.e. not body size) can influence rhythm perception. They had a group of mothers bounce their infants on a rhythm that could be interpreted as either being in duple or in triple meter. They could show (using a head-turn preference procedure, measuring the time an infant pays attention to a stimulus) that bouncing in three or in four influenced the perception of the infant. While one could be critical on some important details, this is a striking empirical finding, and a small step forward in trying to underpin the relation between rhythm cognition and human movement.J. Phillips-Silver (2005). Feeling the Beat: Movement Influences Infant Rhythm Perception Science, 308 (5727), 1430-1430 DOI: 10.1126/science.1110922* Repeated blog entry from July 17, 2007.... Read more »

J. Phillips-Silver. (2005) Feeling the Beat: Movement Influences Infant Rhythm Perception. Science, 308(5727), 1430-1430. DOI: 10.1126/science.1110922

January 26, 2009
05:00 PM
845 views

Do newborn infants have a sense of rhythm?

by Henkjan Honing in Music Matters

It might look somewhat disturbing, but the picture that accompanies this entry is a snapshot of a two day old baby that is healthy and sound asleep! She is one of fourteen newborns that participated in a recent listening experiment, a collaboration between the Institute for Psychology of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and our research group at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands. In this project we are interested in how newborn infants perceive the musical world around them and in how far certain musical skills are innate.We know that newborn infants are sensitive to a variety of sounds. But what do they factually hear? Can they make sense of the musical world around them? Do they have a sense of rhythm, arguably one of the fundaments of music?To study this, we collaborated with a research group in Budapest, Hungary lead by István Winkler, a specialist in auditory perception and one of the pioneers in measuring brain activity in neonates.Since the start of this European research project (named EmCAP) we talked a lot about how we could take advantage of existing theories in music cognition to study auditory perception in newborn infants, and how to probe their (potential) sense of rhythm. After many pilot studies, and resolving quite a few methodological issues that come with doing experiments with neonates, in the end we opted to use a simple, regular rock rhythm, consisting of hi-hat, snare, and bass drum (see below). We made several variants of this rock rhythm by omitting strokes on non-significant metrical positions (i.e. non-syncopated rhythms in music theoretical terms). We then inserted, once in a while, a 'deviant' segment: the same rhythm but with a missing ‘downbeat’ (i.e. a syncopated rhythm). The result sounded like this [click on the play button; to stop, click again]: Since it is quite difficult to observe behavioral reactions in newborns a small number of electrodes were carefully glued to the scalp and face of the newborns to be able to measure their electrical brain signals (see photo). N.B. The baby’s were fed just before the measurements with their mother being present during the whole session that lasted twenty minutes.What did the experiment reveal? Well, shortly after each ‘deviant’ segment began, the babies' brains produced an electrical response indicating that they had expected to hear the downbeat but had not. As such we could show that newborn infants can detect the beat in music (The results will be published this week in PNAS Early Edition).What are the potential implications of these findings? For me, one of the most important realizations is that a cognitive skill called beat induction, which most of us think of as trivial (e.g., being able to tap your foot to the beat), is active so early in life. It can be seen as additional support for the idea that, beat perception contributed to the origins of music since it enabling such actions as clapping, making music together and dancing to a rhythm. Next to being music-specific, beat induction is also considered to be uniquely human. Even our closest evolutionary relatives, such as the chimpanzee and bonobo, do not synchronize their behavior to rhythmic sounds. This makes the topic of beat induction a fundamental issue in current music cognition research (see, e.g., Patel, 2008:402).Furthermore, the results challenge some earlier assumptions that beat induction is learned in the first few months of life, for example by parents rocking the infant. Our study suggests that beat perception must be either innate or learned in the womb (as the auditory system is at least partly functional as of approximately three month before birth).Finally, it should be noted that the auditory capabilities underlying beat induction are also necessary for bootstrapping communication by sounds, allowing infants to adapt to the rhythm of the caretaker’s speech and to find out when to respond to it or to interject their own vocalization. Therefore, although these results are compatible with the notion of the genetic origin of music in humans, they do not provide the final answer in this longstanding debate.István Winkler, Gábor P. Háden, Olivia Ladinig, István Sziller, Henkjan Honing (2009). Newborn infants detect the beat in music. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0809035106... Read more »

István Winkler, Gábor P. Háden,, Olivia Ladinig, István Sziller, & Henkjan Honing. (2009) Newborn infants detect the beat in music. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0809035106

October 2, 2008
04:41 AM
810 views

And what was the symposium like?

by Henkjan Honing in Music Matters

I just returned from the UK where the Music, Science and the Brain symposium was held in celebration of the end of the European EmCAP project. (The lectures will be online as vodcasts soon.)I particularly liked, among others, the presentations of David Huron (Ohio State University, US) and Lauren Stewart (Goldsmith College, UK). David Huron was the keynote speaker (delivered by video link from Columbus, Ohio), His talk was entitled: ‘How Music Produces Goose-bumps and Why Listeners Enjoy It’. Paralleling one of the chapters of his recent book ‘Sweet Anticipation’ (MIT Press), he treated the audience on a waterfall of ideas and findings on why and how music elicits physiological reactions like goose bums (or ‘pilerection’, in more formal terms). However because of the speed of it all, some ideas lacked alternative interpretations or proposals on how to potentially falsify them. Nevertheless, I’m a great fan of David. His knowledge of the literature is more than impressive. You should simply read his book that presents these ideas at a more appropriate pace.Lauren Stewarts’s talk was on amusia (or tone deafness, see earlier blog), and the question of whether people with amusia are destined to get no pleasure out of music (listening) whatsoever. She discussed a recent study, published earlier this year in Music Perception, on the use and functions of music for people ‘suffering’ from amusia. While people with amusia seem to be mostly annoyed by music (‘[I have experienced] just a sort of irritable rage. Now I wonder what others feel and think I may be missing out on something.’), some music appraisal seemed to be shared with ‘normal’ listeners.CLAIRE MCDONALD, LAUREN STEWART (2008). USES AND FUNCTIONS OF MUSIC IN CONGENITAL AMUSIA Music Perception, 25 (4), 345-355 DOI: 10.1525/MP.2008.25.4.345... Read more »

CLAIRE MCDONALD, & LAUREN STEWART. (2008) USES AND FUNCTIONS OF MUSIC IN CONGENITAL AMUSIA. Music Perception, 25(4), 345-355. DOI: 10.1525/MP.2008.25.4.345

March 4, 2011
11:36 AM
788 views

Can infants recognize melodies heard in the womb?

by Henkjan Honing in Music Matters

Last week PlosOne published an interesting finding that shows that one month old infants can recognize a melody that they heard about three weeks before they were born.Developmental psychobiologist Carolyn Granier-Deferre (Paris Descartes University, France) and her colleagues asked fifty women to play a brief recording of a descending piano melody (one that gets lower in pitch) twice daily in the 35th, 36th and 37th weeks of their pregnancy. When the infants were one month old, both the descending melody and an ascending melody were played to the babies in the laboratory (while they slept; see notation below). On average, the heart rates of the sleeping babies briefly slowed by about twelve beats a minute with the familiar descending melody (right), and by only five or six beats with the unfamiliar ascending melody (left). A result that was interpreted as the infants paying more attention to the familiar than the unfamiliar melody.We know for a while that newborns can discriminate or perceive most of the acoustic properties of speech. The prevailing theoretical view is that these capacities are mostly independent of previous auditory experience and that newborns have an innate bias or skill for perceiving speech.By contrast, these results show (as the authors stress in a press release) that merely exposing a human fetus’ developing auditory system to complex stimuli (read ‘music’) can affect how it functions. Next to role of mere exposure one should add that this result is equally convincing evidence for a newborn’s capacity of perceiving and recalling music (see my earlier ‘language bias’ entry). In that sense this study adds to the growing literature that shows that infants in the womb are sensitive to, and can memorize both melody and rhythm. These findings play an important role in a further understanding of a potential biological and evolutionary role of music.Granier-Deferre, C., Bassereau, S., Ribeiro, A., Jacquet, A., & DeCasper, A. (2011). A Melodic Contour Repeatedly Experienced by Human Near-Term Fetuses Elicits a Profound Cardiac Reaction One Month after Birth PLoS ONE, 6 (2) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0017304... Read more »

Granier-Deferre, C., Bassereau, S., Ribeiro, A., Jacquet, A., & DeCasper, A. (2011) A Melodic Contour Repeatedly Experienced by Human Near-Term Fetuses Elicits a Profound Cardiac Reaction One Month after Birth. PLoS ONE, 6(2). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0017304

March 29, 2009
04:52 PM
767 views

How well would you do as an expert?

by Henkjan Honing in Music Matters

In the Netherlands (and I’m sure there are versions of it in the UK and the US as well) there is a weekly radio show containing a returning item in which music experts are asked to compare and judge two or three CD recordings of the same piece, without knowing who the musicians are. They have to guess the performers and describe why they do (or don’t) like that particular performance.How well would you do in such a test? The common hypothesis is that experts do this much better, e.g. under the assumption that they are more sensitive in their listening skills. But do experts indeed hear more detali and more nuances when compared to a 'common listener'? Or do they just have more terminology available to verbalize these differences?Two years ago our group did a large-scale online listening experiment with a similar task. Participants were asked to compare several pairs of recordings of well-known musicians. One of the recordings was taken directly from a CD, but the other was originally performed at another tempo (faster or slower) and then scaled to be similar in tempo to the former recording. The task was to judge which recording was real and which one was manipulated, by focusing on the timing used by the performer.To give you an idea of the difficulty of the task, below an example. A Bvar all_polls = document.getElementsByClassName('quimble_poll_div');for (var i = 0; i ... Read more »

Honing, H., & Ladinig, O. (2009) Exposure influences expressive timing judgments in music. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 35(1), 281-288. DOI: 10.1037/a0012732

June 20, 2008
10:10 AM
738 views

Combining science and music in Montréal?

by Henkjan Honing in Music Matters

I’m about to leave for Montréal, Canada. Next week, at McGill University, the third Neurosciences and Music conference is held: four days of presentations on new research in music cognition and related fields, with presentations by well-known researchers like Steven Mithen, Isabelle Peretz, Sandra Trehub and others. Ani Patel and colleagues will present their intriguing analyses of the ‘dancing cockatoo’ (see earlier blog), and our group will report on an exiting study we did on meter and syncopation with adults and newborns in collaboration with the Institute of Psychology in Budapest. At about the same time there is the Festival International de Jazz de Montréal – a good second excuse to travel. I look forward to, for instance, the solo concert of Brad Melhdau. More next week in some extra blog entries.P.S. See also discussion on Science and Music in Nature last month.Patel, A.D. (2008). Science & Music: Talk of the tone. Nature, 453(7196), 726-727. DOI: 10.1038/453726a... Read more »

Aniruddh Patel. (2008) Science . Nature, 453(7196), 726-727. DOI: 10.1038/453726a

Psychology

March 1, 2011
08:59 AM
729 views

Is music a result of sexual selection?

by Henkjan Honing in Music Matters

For Charles Darwin it was clear: neither the perception nor the production of music were “faculties of the least use to man." At the same occasion he also wrote that “[these faculties] must be ranked amongst the most mysterious with which he is endowed.” (Darwin, 1871). Darwin's hunch was that music could be seen as a product of sexual selection, comparable to a male bird’s display of seductive feathers.This week two of my favorite videos. They ilustrate - anecdotally - Darwin’s idea of music as a result of sexual selection (At least that is how you could interpret the behavior of these two great performers/musicians and their admiring audience ;-) However, despite the attractiveness of Darwin’s idea (more recently elaborated by evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey F. Miller in his book The Mating Mind) there are more arguments against than in favor of this line of thought. One being the fact that major differences could then be expected in the anatomy and behavior of men and women, as is the case where sexual selection in songbirds is concerned. Unlike with songbirds, whales, frogs, and other “song”-producing creatures, there is no substantial difference in the way men or women perceive or produce music nor in their physiology related to music processing (cf. Honing, 2011). The search for the origins of music continues... Blute, M. (2003). [Book Review: The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature] The Quarterly Review of Biology, 78 (1), 129-130 DOI: 10.1086/377917Honing, H. (in press, 2011) Musical Cognition. A Science of Listening. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers.Darwin, G. (1871) The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex.London: Murray (p. 878).... Read more »

Blute, M. (2003) [Book Review: The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature]. The Quarterly Review of Biology, 78(1), 129-130. DOI: 10.1086/377917

July 11, 2008
09:40 PM
721 views

Has it been 25 years already?

by Henkjan Honing in Music Matters

The Music & Language conference —seeing its second edition this year— is celebrating the 25th anniversary of Fred Lerdahl and Ray Jackendoff's landmark book ‘A Generative Theory of Tonal Music’ (GTTM for short). An important book in the short history of music cognition that is widely cited, from computer science to experimental psychology. As I wrote elsewhere (Honing, 2006), I believe that the fact that theories —such as GTTM—, with the ambition to formalize certain aspects of music theory, has led to a greater visibility of musicology at large, especially outside the humanities. The fact that a theory is presented in a formal way allows for an easier formulation of hypotheses, the making of precise predictions, and, consequently, the testing and evaluation of these. As such, it makes this style of music theory compelling to both computer scientists and experimental psychologists. This development is an important example of how a methodology (adapted from, and shared with the sciences) serves as a vehicle — a format for the transmission of ideas between science and the humanities— that turned out to be very influential. However, it has to be noted that there are also examples that were less successful. For instance, theories on music that were developed in the sciences, such as Christopher Longuet-Higgins’ work in the 1970s. This research did not reach the music community in the way one would have expected, even though it is presented in a compelling and formalized form. Thus, the transmission of ideas in formalized form could well be primarily one-directional :-\On Thursday night Fred Lerdahl and Ray Jackendoff’s both joined the stage and reflected on what happened then, in the period leading up to the publication of the book, the late 1970s. While both went their own ways since then, the memories radiated a close, and mutually inspiring relationship effectuated in meetings at kitchen tables and private homes. One more example that interdisciplinary and collaborative work can lead to important developments and changes in science.Lerdahl, F., Jackendoff, R. (1983). A generative theory of tonal music. Cambridge: MIT Press... Read more »

Fred Lerdahl, & Ray Jackendoff. (1983) A generative theory of tonal music. Cambridge: MIT Press. info:ISBN-10: 0-262-62107-X/

Psychology

March 5, 2011
10:30 AM
715 views

A case of congenital beat deafness?

by Henkjan Honing in Music Matters

Of most people that claim things like ‘Oh, but I’m not musical at all’, ‘I’m hopeless at keeping a tune’ or ‘I have no sense of rhythm’, only a small percentage turn out to be unmusical. The condition is known as amusia, and those who suffer from it are literally music-deficient. It is a rather exceptional, mostly inherited condition that comprises a range of handicaps in recognising or reproducing melodies and rhythms. It has been estimated that about 4 per cent of the people in Western Europe and North America have problems in this direction, to a greater or lesser degree. The most common handicap is tone-deafness or dysmelodia: the inability or difficulty in hearing the difference between two separate melodies.To diagnose amusia, the Montreal Battery of Evaluation of Amusia (MBEA) has been developed. This test is available online – but wait a while before trying it out :-) People who say: ‘I can’t hold a note,’ ‘I sing out of tune,’ or ‘I have no sense of rhythm,’ are not necessarily suffering from amusia. Such people often confuse poor singing or dancing skills with the absence of a sense of hearing differences in melodies and rhythms. For instance, clapping a complex rhythm or dancing to the music requires quite some practice. Nevertheless, almost all of us can hear the differences between rhythms. It has been established that, even in people who are diagnosed as being tone-deaf, about half of them have a normal sense for rhythm (Peretz & Hyde, 2003).Jessica Phillips-Silver (Université de Montréal, Canada) and a dream-team of music cognition experts found a person that claims to have truly no sense for rhythm, or, more precisely, is apparently deaf to hearing regularity in music. They describe their results in an upcoming issue of Neuropsychologia.All tests presented in this intriguing study indeed hint at a person that has a true deficit in picking up the regularity in music (the ‘beat’ or regular pulse). However, as with other studies on beat induction, it has proven to be very difficult to support the presence or absence of this skill on judging overt behavior such as dancing (see earlier entries on, e.g., Snowball). The study presents one (non-standard) perceptual test on beat perception, and I’m surprised the researchers did not use a relatively simple and far more direct test to see if beat induction is present or absent in this participant, such as the MMN paradigm used in work with newborns (e.g., Honing et al., 2009) or other recent studies making use of brain imaging methods. Would make a great follow-up paper :-)Phillips-Silver, J., Toiviainen, P., Gosselin, N., Piché, O., Nozaradan, S., Palmer, C., & Peretz, I. (2011). Born to dance but beat deaf: A new form of congenital amusia Neuropsychologia DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2011.02.002Peretz, I. & Hyde, K. (2003). What is specific to music processing? Insights from congenital amusia Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 7 (8), 362-367 DOI: 10.1016/S1364-6613(03)00150-5Honing, H., Ladinig, O., Háden, G., & Winkler, I. (2009). Is Beat Induction Innate or Learned? Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1169 (1), 93-96 DOI: 10.1111/j.1749-6632.2009.04761.x... Read more »

Phillips-Silver, J., Toiviainen, P., Gosselin, N., Piché, O., Nozaradan, S., Palmer, C., & Peretz, I. (2011) Born to dance but beat deaf: A new form of congenital amusia. Neuropsychologia. DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2011.02.002

Peretz, I. (2003) What is specific to music processing? Insights from congenital amusia. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 7(8), 362-367. DOI: 10.1016/S1364-6613(03)00150-5

Honing, H., Ladinig, O., Háden, G., & Winkler, I. (2009) Is Beat Induction Innate or Learned?. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1169(1), 93-96. DOI: 10.1111/j.1749-6632.2009.04761.x

March 16, 2010
10:54 AM
713 views

Do infants prefer music over speech?

by Henkjan Honing in Music Matters

In this weeks online edition of PNAS Marcel Zentner and Tuomas Eerola report on a study in which they carried out two experiments with a total of 120 infants, aged between 5 and 24 months. The infants were exposed to various musical and rhythmic stimuli, including isochronous drumbeats. Control stimuli consisted of adult- and infant-directed speech. The researchers could show that infants engage significantly more in rhythmic movement to music, and other rhythmically regular sounds, than to speech. The findings are suggestive of a predisposition for rhythmic movement in response to music and other metrically regular sounds. The study adds to the existing evidence that infants have a liking and preference for rhythmical music from day one, a predisposition that preceeds language.Zentner, M., & Eerola, T. (2010). Rhythmic engagement with music in infancy Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1000121107... Read more »

Zentner, M., & Eerola, T. (2010) Rhythmic engagement with music in infancy. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1000121107

March 1, 2008
09:08 PM
701 views

Why do we have music? (On music vs musicality)

by Henkjan Honing in Music Matters

Looking back on it, a returning question in this blog turns out to be: Why do we have music? And what is the point of studying it scientificly?While it became quite popular to address such questions from an evolutionary perspective, there is still little support for the idea that music is an adaptation, that it makes you live longer, or that it makes one sexually more attractive. In fact, it made Steven Pinker position music as, at most, a byproduct of language:As far as biological cause and effect are concerned, music is useless … music is quite different from language … it is... Read more »

Steven Mithen, Iain Morley, Alison Wray, Maggie Tallerman, & Clive Gamble. (2006) The Singing Neanderthals: the Origins of Music, Language, Mind and Body , by Steven Mithen. London: Weidenfeld . Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 16(01), 97. DOI: 10.1017/S0959774306000060

JOSH McDERMOTT, & MARC HAUSER. (2005) THE ORIGINS OF MUSIC: INNATENESS, UNIQUENESS, AND EVOLUTION. Music Perception, 23(1), 29-59. DOI: 10.1525/mp.2005.23.1.29

Psychology

May 15, 2008
07:48 AM
699 views

Final ritards in Balinese music?

by Henkjan Honing in Music Matters

This week an interesting article appeared in Empirical Musicology Review, an open peer-reviewed journal on music. Andrew McGraw (University of Richmond) discusses the use of tempo-change in Balinese music. The most common kind of tempo-change is often referred to as the ‘final ritard’: the typical slowing down at the end of a music performance, apparent in Javanese and Balinese gamelan music, music from the Western Baroque and Romantic period, but also in quite some pop and jazz genres. An important contribution to this topic is made by a family of computational theories, so-called ‘kinematic models’, that propose an explicit relation between the laws of physical motion (elementary mechanics) in the real world and chaneg of tempo (so-called "expressive timing") in music performance. These models were shown to produce a good fit with a variety of empirical performance data, suggesting that the final ritard alludes to human movement: the pattern of runners’ deceleration.Unfortunately, the McGraw study is yet another example of a study that takes ‘tempo curves’ too seriously as a potential description, or even mental representation, of tempo-change in music (A hobby horse of mine that I shouldn't bring in once more; cf. here). Furthermore, the author seems to be unaware of the notorious mistake made by Feldman, Epstein and Richards (MIT, Cambridge, Mass.) in their 1992 study. In there the authors propose a theory of tempo change (or rubato) based on the laws of physical motion, but in the end fit the empirical data to models unrelated to these laws. So indeed, the conclusion that "previous idealized models are too simplistic to describe Balinese music" is correct. In fact, it has been shown for both music performance and music perception. The challenge is still to model the regularity and structure that can characterize this particular use of tempo rubato.Nevertheless, the paper is a much needed contribution to music perception and cognition research by studying other than Western classical music, a genre that is still dominating the literature.McGraw, A.C. (2008). The Perception and Cognition of Time in Balinese Music. Empirical Musicology Review, 3(2), 38-54.HONING, H. (2005). IS THERE A PERCEPTION-BASED ALTERNATIVE TO KINEMATIC MODELS OF TEMPO RUBATO?. Music Perception, 23(1), 79-85. DOI: 10.1525/mp.2005.23.1.79... Read more »

Andrew McGraw. (2008) The Perception and Cognition of Time in Balinese Music. Empirical Musicology Review, 3(4), 38-54. https://kb.osu.edu/dspace/bitstream/1811/31938/1/EMR000043a_McGraw.pdf

HENKJAN HONING. (2005) IS THERE A PERCEPTION-BASED ALTERNATIVE TO KINEMATIC MODELS OF TEMPO RUBATO?. Music Perception, 23(1), 79-85. DOI: 10.1525/mp.2005.23.1.79

Psychology

June 27, 2008
02:05 AM
683 views

Is beat induction special? (Part 4)

by Henkjan Honing in Music Matters

Beat induction has been a recurring topic on this blog. The topic was also the focus at the opening symposium of the Neurosciences and Music Conference, currently being held in Montreal, Canada. Especially researchers like Jessica A. Grahn (Cognition and Brain Science Unit, Cambridge), Joel S. Snyder (University of Nevada, Las Vegas), Ed W. Large (Florida Atlantic University) and John R. Iversen (Neursosciences Institute, San Diego) talked about different aspects of beat perception and synchonization in relation to the structure of the brain. While there is quite some agreement that auditory rhythm processing is associated with movement and auditory brain areas, also some deeper brain areas were proposed as candidates. An elegant series of studies was presented by Joyce L. Chen (McGill University, Montreal) that went a step further in looking for patterns in how these brain areas might be interrelated. She could show (using a very nice design in which behavioral data informs and helps the analyses of brain imaging data) an intimate linkage between the auditory and premotor brain circuit, a link that was suggested to be “at the core of what links music, movement and language together”.However, in how far beat induction is special –in the sense that it might be a uniquely human trait (see earlier blog)– is still under much discussion. Ed W. Large (Florida State University) mentioned in his talk yesterday that he is currently testing bonobo’s on having beat induction (Needless to say that he is optimistic on that, but the results will only be published later this year). This morning Aniruddh D. Patel (The Neurosciences Institute, San Diego) presented a poster with the first data of the ‘dancing cockatoo’ (mentioned in an earlier blog). Below a short compilation of some of the recordings that Patel’s group analyzed and presented here at the Neurosciences and Music conference (with the kind permission of Ani Patel):

The video is convincing in suggesting that the cockatoo seems to be really sensitive -at least in these fragments- to the tempo of the music and can be argued to really listen and able to pick up the induced beat. When looking at the actual measurements however, the story is less convincing. Five video’s where recorded, of which three had to be rejected because the experimenter might have moved along while the video was made. In the remaining two video’s ‘successful’ dancing on the beat was ranging between 2.5% to 20% of the trials (an episode of say one minute of dancing). Part of the problem, quite interesting from a methodological and statistical point of view, is how to show that all this is better than chance.Patel, A.D., et al., . (2008). Investigating the human-specificity of synchronization to music. In: M. Adachi et al. (Eds.), Proceedings of the International Music Perception and Cognition Conference (ICMPC10), Sapporo: Japan / Adelaide: Causal Productions.... Read more »

Aniruddh Patel, & et al. (2008) Investigating the human-specificity of synchronization to music. Proceedings of the International Music Perception and Cognition Conference.

Psychology

May 27, 2009
03:59 PM
662 views

A gene for music?

by Henkjan Honing in Music Matters

Last week a paper was published in PLoS-ONE suggesting a relation between AVPR1A-Haplotypes and musical creativity. A group of Finish researchers analyzed 19 families with a total of 343 family members on their musical aptitude —using the Seashore test and a test developed by one of the authors— and their DNA profiles. They were able to show an association between these and related genes and levels of musical creativity. The research contrasts earlier research with twins that suggested no such relation (e.g., Coon & Carey, 1989). The authors propose the interesting hypothesis that music perception and creativity in music are linked to the same phenotypic spectrum of human cognitive social skills, like human bonding and altruism, both associated with AVPR1A. Music as a form of ‘extreme’ bonding behavior...Ukkola, L., Onkamo, P., Raijas, P., Karma, K., & Järvelä, I. (2009). Musical Aptitude Is Associated with AVPR1A-Haplotypes PLoS ONE, 4 (5) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0005534Coon, H., & Carey, G. (1989). Genetic and environmental determinants of musical ability in twins Behavior Genetics, 19 (2), 183-193 DOI: 10.1007/BF01065903... Read more »

Ukkola, L., Onkamo, P., Raijas, P., Karma, K., & Järvelä, I. (2009) Musical Aptitude Is Associated with AVPR1A-Haplotypes. PLoS ONE, 4(5). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0005534

Coon, H., & Carey, G. (1989) Genetic and environmental determinants of musical ability in twins. Behavior Genetics, 19(2), 183-193. DOI: 10.1007/BF01065903

April 28, 2008
05:16 PM
660 views

A sense for rhythm? (Part 3)

by Henkjan Honing in Music Matters

Last week quite a few people participated in an informal listening test on rhythm. It gratefully used some of the stimuli from a study by Hannon and Trehub (H&T).*H&T studied the sensitivity of listeners to detect violations of rhythmic structure in simple meters (i.e. duple and triple meter; such as a march or waltz) and more complex meters (i.e. compound meter, such as 5/8 and 7/8, common to, e.g., Balkan music).N.B. Last week???s fragment 1 was an example of a stimulus in a simple meter, fragment 2 was one in a complex meter (see earlier blog).H&Ts... Read more »

Erin Hannon, & Sandra E Trehub. (2005) Metrical Categories in Infancy and Adulthood. Psychological Science, 16(1), 48-55. DOI: 10.1111/j.0956-7976.2005.00779.x

Psychology

July 6, 2008
12:03 PM
660 views

Listen and learn?

by Henkjan Honing in Music Matters

This week Nature published a last in a series of nine essays on the topic of Science and Music, essays by Huron, Trainor, Patel and others (see also podcast). The last one was by John Sloboda, renowned for his excellent research in the psychology of music, music and emotion and a variety of educational issues in music. In his essay he stresses —like in his well-known article What makes a musician?— that talent for music is a myth, in the sense that it is not special but a 'talent' we all share. Listen and learn is one of the headings of the essay. Sloboda writes:"One beneficial effect of ... Read more »

John Sloboda. (2008) Science and Music: The ear of the beholder. Nature, 454(7200), 32-33. DOI: 10.1038/454032a

Psychology

March 31, 2011
07:43 PM
653 views

Can music be funny?

by Henkjan Honing in Music Matters

In the spirit of today a fragment from New Horizons in Music Appreciation, a program from Radio Station WOOF at the University of Southern North Dakota at Hoople: an early example of how to attract a wider audience to listen to classical music:With regard to today's question: David Huron (2004) studied audience laughter in live recordings of Peter Schickele's music (One of the presenters in the above broadcast). He offers a physiological explanation for why listeners respond to specific musical fragments by producing the distinctive "ha-ha-ha ..." vocalization. Huron, D. (2004). Music-engendered laughter: an analysis of humor devices in P.D.Q. Bach Proceedings of the 8th International Conference of Music Perception and Cognition, 700-704.... Read more »

David Huron. (2004) Music-engendered laughter: an analysis of humor devices in PDQ Bach . Proceedings of the 8th International Conference of Music Perception and Cognition, 700-704. info:/

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