Search results for "Music and emotion"

Success in reaching affect self-regulation goals through everyday music listening

2023

While music listening on mobile phones can serve many affect-regulatory goals, success in reaching these goals is yet to be empirically assessed. This study aimed to determine how frequently listeners successfully reach their affect-regulatory goals, and the predictors of this success. Data were collected using the experience sampling app MuPsych, from 293 Finnish participants. Goals were successfully reached in less than half of cases, with adults more successful than adolescents. Success was determined largely within contexts, and strongly predicted by an initial low-valenced emotional state of the listener, suggesting that music listening is particularly useful for those in negative stat…

Video Visualization of Predictors of Emotions Dynamically Expressed by Music

2013

Music is particularly appreciated for its capacity of evoking a large range of emotions. A growing area of research in music psychology and computer music endeavors to understand and model the role of the different constituents of music in its overall emotional impact. Whereas research so far has mainly focused on global musical and emotional descriptions, our project investigates more in detail the relationship between the dynamic evolution of musical content and the dynamic development of the resulting emotional reaction. We introduce a new method for predicting the dynamic appreciation of emotion based on audio and musical descriptions. We focus on one particular emotion: power. We propo…

Key processing precedes emotional categorization of Western music.

2005

To investigate whether key processing precedes the appraisal of valence in music, participants listened to pairs of clips of same or different valence, played either in the same key or one semitone apart. They judged whether the second clip expressed the same emotion as the first one. Our predictions were confirmed: the response times obtained were shorter when both clips were played in the same key than when they were played one semitone apart.

Music and emotion: Themes and development

2011

This special issue draws on a selection of papers presented at the inaugural International Conference on Music and Emotion in Durham in 2009, focusing on the scientific approach to understanding music and emotions. In this editorial we consider the current state of research into music and emotion, drawing comparisons with the earlier special issue of this journal published ten years ago and between the two edited collections which mark progress in this period. We consider issues of theory and methodology in relation to the wider field of psychology of music as illustrated by the papers in this volume and other recently published research, considering some of the barriers towards progress a…

Musical structure modulates semantic priming in vocal music.

2004

It has been shown that harmonic structure may influence the processing of phonemes whatever the extent of participants' musical expertise [Bigand, E., Tillmann, B., Poulin, B., D'Adamo, D. A.,Madurell, F. (2001). The effect of harmonic context on phoneme monitoring in vocal music. Cognition, 81, B11-B20]. The present study goes a step further by investigating how musical harmony may potentially interfere with the processing of words in vocal music. Eight-chord sung sentences were presented, their last word being either semantically related (La girafe a un tres grand cou, The giraffe has a very long neck) or unrelated to the previous linguistic context (La girafe a un tres grand pied, The gi…

2015

Learning new words is an increasingly common necessity in everyday life. External factors, among which music and social interaction are particularly debated, are claimed to facilitate this task. Due to their influence on the learner’s temporal behavior, these stimuli are able to drive the learner’s attention to the correct referent of new words at the correct point in time. However, do music and social interaction impact learning behavior in the same way? The current study aims to answer this question. Native German speakers (N = 80) were requested to learn new words (pseudo-words) during a contextual learning game. This learning task was performed alone with a computer or with a partner, w…

More About the Musical Expertise of Musically Untrained Listeners

2003

Several behavioral experiments that were designed to compare the abilities of musicians and nonmusicians to process subtle changes in musical structures are surveyed. These experiments deal with different aspects of music perception including the processing of melodic and harmonic structures, the processing of large-scale structures, and implicit learning. In all these experiments, the so-called nonmusician listeners behaved in a very similar way as did highly trained students from music conservatories and music departments. This outcome suggests that when the experimental setting requires participants to process musical structures (in contrast to musical tones), the large audience of untra…

Electrophysiological Correlates of Aesthetic Music Processing

2009

We analyzed the processes of making aesthetic judgments of music, focusing on the differences between music experts and laypersons. Sixteen students of musicology and 16 control subjects (also students) judged the aesthetic value as well as the harmonic correctness of chord sequences. Event-related potential (ERP) data indicate differences between experts and laypersons in making aesthetic judgments at three different processing stages. Additionally, effects of expertise on ERP components that have previously been proven to be sensitive to musical training were replicated. The study thus provides insights into the effects of musical expertise on neural correlates of aesthetic music processi…

Perception of emotional content in musical performances by 3–7-year- old children

2013

The emotional content expressed through musical performance has become a widely-discussed topic in music psychology during the past two decades. However, empirical evidence regarding children’s abilities in interpreting the emotional content of a musical performance is sparse. We investigated 3–7-year-old children’s abilities to interpret the emotional content expressed through performance features in music. Short musical pieces previously rated as inexpressive of emotion were recorded by three musicians with five emotional expressions (happy, sad, fearful, angry and neutral) and played to 3–7-year-old children ( N = 94), adult non-musicians ( N = 83), and adult musicians ( N = 118) who ma…

Affective reactions to musical stimuli reflect emotional use of music in everyday life

2013

Music is a common means for regulating affective states in everyday life, but little is known about the individual differences in this behaviour. We investigated affective reactions to musical stimuli as an explanatory factor. Forty-four young adults rated self-selected music regarding perceived and felt emotions, preference, pleasantness and beauty. The ratings were reduced into five factors representing affective response tendencies. The participants also filled in the Music in Mood Regulation (MMR) questionnaire assessing seven music-related mood regulation strategies in everyday life. High beauty and pleasantness ratings for liked music correlated with the use of music for inducing str…