Music Cognition Matters

Abstract: As music researchers, especially those of us privileged to be teaching at higher education level, it is tempting to design research projects that involve music students as participants: they are there, they are interesting, they are the future, and they are generally willing! But how often do we consider the full ethical implications of asking students to be participants in our research, particularly if we then inhabit the dual roles of 'researcher' and 'teacher'? In the fields of medicine (particularly nursing), psychology, and the Scholarship of Learning and Teaching, researchers have published papers about their experiences and their students' experiences of this kind of research, the implications of their findings for future research, and frameworks that can be used to uphold ethical conduct when inviting students to act as research participants. This presentation will synthesise results from that body of literature, consider my current research project focusing on the experiences of undergraduate music students taking part in a Musicians' Health and Wellness module as a case study, and provide opportunities for discussion of our responses to this information and how it may affect research in the future.

Abstract: The theory of Uniform Information Density, originally proposed for language, is very suggestive with regard to music as well. The theory states that communication is optimal when information is presented at a moderate and uniform rate. Three predictions follow for music: (1) low-probability events should be longer in duration than high-probability events; (2) low-probability events should be mixed with high-probability events; (3) an event that is low in probability in one dimension should be high in probability in other dimensions. I present evidence supporting all three of these predictions from several diverse areas of Western music: Renaissance counterpoint, expressive piano performance, common-practice themes, and popular song melodies.

Abstract: What does researching with audiences tell us about how people engage with music and the value it brings to their lives? And how can this insight shape the future of the culture sector and the music industry? In this talk, I share insights from a range of studies I have carried out with audiences for music and other cultural events, culminating in my current book project, 'Audiences for Classical Music'.

Abstract: Predictive Processing (PP) is an increasingly influential framework in cognitive science, and its prospects and implications are currently being hotly debated. Drawing from and refining a venerable lineage of approaches in the study of the mind, PP sees cognition as an active inferential process in which the predictions of a hierarchical probabilistic model are tested against the incoming sensory stimulations. This picture of cognition has recently been adopted by a growing number of researchers interested in the arts and aesthetics. What is emerging from this encounter is an interdisciplinary framework that promises to capture the whole range of human aesthetic activities and provide new answers to old philosophical questions, such as the scope of aesthetic experience, the nature of aesthetic pleasure, and the relationship between art and learning. In this talk, I will present the PP approach to art and aesthetics. I will start by outlining the central tenets of the approach (the role of inference and affect in aesthetic experience, the preference for stimuli that afford optimal levels of predictive progress, etc.). I will then show how the approach can be applied to a wide range of arts and activities, including visual art, literature, music, and the performative arts. I will then concentrate on music as a particularly fertile ground for research in this area. The upshot will be the outline of a vast but well-defined research programme that promises to deliver important insights on the arts and aesthetics as well as other psychological phenomena of general interest – a research programme in which music could play (and is already playing) a leading role.

Abstract: Music has always been an object of interest for several disciplines and has recently also attracted the attention of neuroscience. Among various research lines in the neuroscience of music, a fascinating approach is offered by those works conducted within the predictive processing framework. These seems to offer, among other things, a neat way of relating many important psychological phenomena related to music listening, including aesthetic pleasure, learning, and different epistemic emotions such as curiosity or anxiety. In this talk, I will explore the main tenets of this predictive processing approach to music. I will then present the results of a series of three experiments that seem to provide empirical support, as well as useful expansions, to this approach. In the first experiment (an EEG study), we investigated the modulation by musical aesthetic appreciation of attentional resource and implicit learning processes. In the second experiment, we examined whether music-induced aesthetic experience would influence curiosity in a gambling task. In the third experiment, we explored the relationship between music-induced aesthetic appreciation and anxiety by assessing both behavioural and electrophysiological (i.e., skin conductance response) measures. All these experiments present results consistent with the predictive processing approach. Overall, musical aesthetic appreciation appears to enhance attentional resource and implicit learning process, promote curiosity-driven behavior, and be negatively associated with anxiety. These results are also consistent with the idea that aesthetic pleasure could act as a “valve”, prompting the individual experience curiosity (i.e., a positive evaluation of novelty as a valuable opportunity to acquire new knowledge) rather anxiety (i.e., a negative evaluation ofnovelty as a risk to be avoided).

Abstract: In this talk I will discuss some of my findings on musicking in virtually mediated contexts. With a focus on connectedness, I will touch upon the topics of (temporal) co-presence and parasocial interaction, as well as elaborate on the who and why of virtual (reality) concerts.

Abstract: This talk introduces some of the step changes that have been made in music-computational tasks in recent years, such as in automatic source separation, beat tracking, multi-F0 estimation, and pattern discovery. The creation of annotated datasets and design of listening studies that formerly were inconceivable, due to lack of access to the musical elements within recordings, are now within reach. My call to action is that music psychologists should harness and use these much-improved tools, potentially leading to new and refined insights into how we perceive and produce music.

Abstract: One of the most common musical engagements involves listening to music when alone. Although this scenario may appear mostly asocial, there is much evidence in existing research to suggest that music can be interacted with as a social ‘agent’ when listening: Music can provide company or consolation, express characters, personas, and narratives, can be empathised with, and can be something that listeners identify with, or feel one with. This talk will explore these ‘pseudo-social music listening’ experiences from perceptual, cognitive, and affective perspectives, present new data from an online survey, and critically discuss how such engagements with music may relate to the concept of parasocial interaction, a concept extensively studied in the field of communication studies that has rarely been considered in relation to music.

Abstract: While previous studies of music experience mostly focussed on studying isolated listeners in artificial listening situations, new technological developments allow for the assessment of in situ live music experiences at concerts. Here, we used measures of subjective experience, physiological activation, synchronous movement, and expressive behaviour. This presentation will feature results from studies that show what benefits evolve from using these measures and which conclusions can be drawn for music cognition research.

Abstract: Concerts are events in which a group of people gather to experience the same music. Previous research suggests that moving to music promotes bonding through enhanced feelings of togetherness, liking, and cooperation. Whether concerts are venues for social bonding, and what aspects of concerts might enhance bonding, has been explored recently through a series of studies led by doctoral researcher Dana Swarbrick. Taken together, the results suggest that live and virtual concerts can promote socioemotional experiences of social connectedness, feeling moved, and awe. Motion can reflect and influence these socioemotional experiences. To harness concerts’ full potential to promote connectedness among members of the audience, it is important that they are experienced live.

Abstract: Music Cognition is an inherently interdisciplinary field and can be approached from multiple perspectives. With the advancements of computer science and music technology, the tools available for empirical musicology, performance science and music cognition are becoming more powerful and easier to use. This also opens doors for researchers to blur disciplinary boundaries through upskilling, broadening perspectives on approaches to research and embracing collaboration. This talk will discuss the opportunities and challenges of interdisciplinary research, especially across the often drawn divides between arts, science and technologies, through the lens of a number of research projects focussed on virtual choirs. The practicalities of interdisciplinary research as well as the value of engaging with stakeholders will be considered across the chain of the research process from initial ideas, funding, project delivery and impact.

Abstract: Music is the product of a long evolutionary process that has shaped it for the human mind and its constraints – similarly to language. In this talk I will describe the motivation, present endeavours, and future directions of an inter-disciplinary programme of research that aims to explore both the cultural-evolutionary as well as the neurocognitive aspects of the "special relationship" between language and music, at different temporal and conceptual levels of analysis.

Abstract: All around the world, music is used to connect people, often through shared body movements. Certain types of music are herein better suited for eliciting and coordinating body movements than others. The pleasurable urge to move to music is a uniquely human experience that follows an inverted U-shaped relationship with rhythmic complexity: compared to simple and complex rhythms, moderately complex rhythms induce the strongest pleasurable urge to move. The connection between ratings of social bonding in interpersonal interactions that feature music and rhythmic complexity exhibits a comparable inverted U-shaped pattern. I will present research on these inverted U relationships and connect the pleasurable urge to move to music with others to empathy - the ability to understand and share the feelings and experiences of others.

Abstract: The focus of models on music cognition and musical thinking assumes a singular neurotypical way of thinking, which I dispute. Research on neurodivergent conditions like dyslexia, autism spectrum disorder (ASD), and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) has concentrated on using music as a form of therapy to "cure" perceived disabilities instead of celebrating the strengths and talents of the neurodiverse musical community. In some cases, such as synaesthesia, innate neurodivergence is a fundamental aspect of an individual's musical experience and identity (Curwen, 2020). Although synaesthesia isn't necessarily harmful, it still falls under the category of neurodivergent thinking as it differs from perceived neurotypical cognition. I argue that synaesthesia in response to music should be viewed on a continuum from "synaesthesia" to "typical music cognition" rather than as a unique, separate entity (Curwen, 2022, 2020, 2018). My research leads me to establish a foundation for investigating neurodiversity in music cognition and for developing models that embrace such diversity.

Abstract: Disability is broadly defined according to two opposing models. The medical model views disability as biological defect or dysfunction, to be treated or cured with science and medicine. The social model argues that people are not disabled by their impairments but by barriers in their environments, putting onus on society to better accommodate for disabled people. In this talk, I will consider how the social model of disability aligns with Enactivist approaches to mind and behaviour, casting disability as a matter of blocked of frustrated coupling with the environment. I will present case studies of disabled music engagement, and argue how a socio-enactivist model of disability requires us to ask new questions about disabled musical embodiment.

Abstract: The emergence of digitally encoded musical corpora and advanced computational tools such as the Information Dynamics of Music Model (IDyOM) has allowed music scientists to dissociate the sometimes complementary roles of retrospective surprise and prospective uncertainty in the cognition, composition, and improvisation of musical melodies. In this talk, I will review already published and in-progress findings to exemplify this research programme. I will share empirical evidence that explicit and implicit instantiations of predictive uncertainty can be modelled with entropy derived from IDyOM, that these measures can be used to distinguish individuals who have undergone different types of stylistic specialization, and that such musical enculturation is associated with different degrees of explicit processing. Prospective uncertainty informs real-time perceptual segmentation of musical stimuli, resulting in melodic phrases with expectancy dynamics that are shared across musical traditions which exhibit vastly divergent surface features. Differences in the use of surprise and uncertainty, moreover, characterize the styles of three Viennese twelve-tone composers and may be used to distinguish repeated patterns in the improvisations of an expert-level jazz pianist effectuated with high or low degrees of stereotypicality in timing and velocity. Advances in the understanding of the intricate interplay between prospective and retrospective processes in musical expectancy dynamics have implications for basic science and practice within music psychology, therapy, and education.

Abstract: The everyday, involuntary imagining of music is commonplace. While this is not usually problematic, there is a need to support individuals who suffer from intrusive musical imagery. In this talk, I discuss a project testing the feasibility of a method to inhibit the initial development of so-called ‘earworms’. Building on research regarding intrusive thoughts (Akerman et al., 2020), the project studies variation in the familiarity of the music that we are exposed to in daily life, to ask what might be done to prevent music that is either known to us, or new to us, from developing into intrusive musical imagery.

Abstract: Research suggests we fail to pay attention to what we are doing as much as 50% of the time, and that the act of music listening is no exception. So, what is known about the mechanisms and factors that drive us to listen -or conversely mind wander - at any given point in an encounter with a musical piece? In this talk I will attempt to address this question; reviewing studies in music cognition and highlighting insights from other relevant fields. Ultimately, I will argue that investigating the causes and consequences of time-varying changes in music engagement has wide-ranging implications; from a better understanding of music listening’s affordances to providing a useful context for understanding attention in real life contexts.

Abstract: In the realm of music cognition, the primary focus of imagery research has been on auditory mental imagery, which refers to the quasi-perceptual experience of sound and music in the absence of related external sensory input. However, recent studies reveal that other modalities, like visual mental imagery (i.e., seeing images in one's mind’s eye), also significantly contribute to the experience of listening to music. This presentation will offer a summary of new empirical research on music-triggered visual mental imagery, addressing fundamental questions such as its content, purpose, connection to emotion, neurophysiological underpinnings, and association with synaesthesia. The core argument posits that music cognition is a multimodal phenomenon that presents a valuable model for exploring the pathways from perception to imagination.