From 2012 to 2023, the American Psychological Association served as publisher of Psychomusicology: Music, Mind, and Brain. Annabel Cohen and Mark Schmuckler were the successive editors-in-chiefs during this time. As the journal is ceasing publication, the two editors reflect on the development and progress of the journal in the context of the history of psychology and publication trends. They present their review in 10 short movements each with a unique musical emotional expressivity: overture, amabile, vivace, elegy doloroso, sforzando, capriccio, con brio, pendolo, agilmente, and finale risonante, ending on a very upbeat note! Early on, Psychomusicology offered a much-needed research forum for the psychology of music. More recently, the recognized importance of music psychology to almost all areas of psychology has led to increasing numbers of outlets for publication. During the 12 recent years under APA's stewardship, the journal more than doubled the number of articles published since the journal's inception in 1981. The entire corpus of almost 600 articles represents foundational and well-cited contributions to such current research areas as musical expectancy, performance excellence, musical development, neuroscience, emotion, preference, and film music, among others. Cohen and Schmuckler express deep gratitude to the authors, past editorial board members, and reviewers for their contributions to this corpus, and to the American Psychological Association Publications office and staff both for support and, importantly, for holding and making accessible in perpetuity the outstanding scholarship within the archives of Psychomusicology: Music Mind & Brain and Psychomusicology: A Journal of Music Cognition.
Growing evidence suggests that pitch influences musical processing, with melodic processing being enhanced in higher pitch ranges (e.g., Fujioka et al., 2005) and rhythmic processing being enhanced in lower pitches, and these effects may have a basis in elementary properties of the auditory system (e.g., Hove et al., 2014). As such, pitch may constitute a fundamental constraint on the mechanisms that underpin musical learning. One such mechanism is implicit learning: the ability to learn from mere exposure without intention and without a clear awareness of what has been learned. The present study examined whether the high pitch effects that enhance melodic processing extend to implicit learning of melodic structure as well. In an artificial melodic grammar experiment, it was found that participants learned melodic structure better when instantiated in a lower rather than a higher pitch range. We propose that hearing melodies in lower pitch ranges attracts more attention, because melodic information is usually instantiated in higher pitches, and lower pitch melodies may cause attention to shift leading to more learning.
Having participants listen and react to musical stimuli is one of music cognition's foundational methods. Whereas most researchers have used stimuli adapted from existing musical traditions in such work, others have incorporated artificial stimuli (i.e., stimuli generated specifically for research that are not borrowed from any existing musical system) into their research designs. No review of this growing literature on artificial stimuli exists, leaving open the question of how useful they are in helping formulate and test research questions in music cognition. To this end, a systematic narrative review of empirical studies utilizing artificial musical stimuli (N = 52) was conducted. Comparing these studies to analogous works involving conventional stimuli in the areas of music preference, music learning, and musical emotion revealed the power of artificial stimuli in reducing concerns regarding stimulus familiarity and musical enculturation confounds, as well as in refining theory by reiterating the need for the development of composite predictive models in music cognition. This review also suggests that using artificial stimuli has the potential to help clarify the neurological and sociocognitive factors surrounding music listening behavior. Furthermore, because artificial stimuli are not tied to any existing sociocultural musical system, they may also lead to more generalizable findings. This enhanced generalizability may also coincide with expanded inclusivity, toward which the field of music cognition (and psychology more generally) are increasingly striving. Other potential uses, benefits, and limitations of artificial musical stimuli are discussed, as well as recommendations for researchers seeking to utilize such stimuli in future studies.
Sixty-nine participants made continuous response judgments of perceived arousal and valence while listening to 30-s extracts of 100 unfamiliar pieces within a novel recommender system. Our purpose was to take advantage of the relatively large number of participants and pieces studied (compared with prior work on time series analysis [TSA] of continuous affective responses to music) to test the generality of the deductions made from prior evidence in smaller studies. Accordingly, we expected highly autoregressive responses, and hypothesized that acoustic intensity fluctuation would be a major (population-wide, fixed-effect) predictor of arousal and to a lesser degree valence responses in multivariate models, operating in conjunction with broad features of the spectral profile of the music (such as spectral flatness and centroid). We expected considerable interparticipant variability and were interested in the degree to which there was also interpiece variability (both being features of group-specific, random effects). The basic expectations were supported, and we also demonstrated, partly by means of a novel use of cluster analysis, that the observed group variabilities in response features could not be readily attributed to indices of a range of participant-preference and piece-feature characteristics, determined prior to the experiments. A Bayesian analysis was developed, possibly for the first time in the TSA of continuous affect responses to music, since it provides a more comprehensive description of the parameters of the analysis (not only their best estimate point values) and their effects, and a comprehensive range of tests for meaningful effects.
Nostalgia, a past-oriented emotion characterized by complex affective responses, is a pervasive and fundamental human experience. Prior research has demonstrated that nostalgia serves various socioemotional functions, such as promoting a sense of belonging, enhancing one's perception of meaning in life, and boosting self-esteem. These positive emotions, in turn, can prompt individuals to engage in other-oriented behaviors, such as charitable giving. Building on this view, this study examined the impact of listening to nostalgic music on donation decisions. Undergraduate students in the United States (n = 83) and Mexico (n = 97) voluntarily participated in an online, one-on-one, experiment in which they listened to a series of self-selected nostalgic musical pieces and participated in a donation dictator game. Results indicated a significant relationship between music-evoked nostalgia and the amount of subsequent donations. Moreover, the study also found that individual differences in empathy, agreeableness (one of the Big Five personality traits), and perceived financial well-being also influenced the participants' donation decisions. Notably, the effects of these factors showed slight variations across the U.S. and Mexican samples, suggesting the role of culture in individual donation decisions.
Previous literature has found links between music listening and cognitive performance. Specifically, background music may play a role in modulating cognitive inhibition. However, determining what type of background music affects cognitive inhibition throughout the lifespan has not been studied. The purpose of this study was to analyze the effect that listening to preferred music has on cognitive inhibition in healthy young and healthy older adults. We hypothesized that there will be no differences in accuracy or reaction time when listening to preferred music, neutral music, or no music during Stroop task performance in both young and older adults, but young adults will demonstrate better performance on the Stroop task compared to older adults regardless of the music condition. Thirty young adults and thirteen older adults completed the Stroop task. Three conditions of words were presented randomly: neutral (infrequent words sol, helot, eft, and abjure presented in different colors), congruent (color of word matches the word), and incongruent (color of the word does not match the word itself). The music listening order was also randomized to minimize order effects. Results revealed that older adults were slower and more accurate that young adults across all music and Stroop conditions. Conclusions indicate that listening to music neither improved or hindered cognitive inhibition in the Stroop task in young and older adults.
Absolute pitch (AP) is a fairly rare and special phenomenon that has relevance for musicology, psychology, genetics, and neuroscience. AP possessors are able to identify the pitch of an isolated sound or to produce that sound without a reference point. The authors' aim is to review the literature on AP. The phenomenon of AP was described in the era of Mozart, but it was only in the last decades of the 19th century that it became the focus of research. The standardization of the tuning system and organized music education underlied the interest in AP, and Bachem's tone chroma concept was relevant as well. The prevalence of AP is estimated to be between 0.01% and 1% in the general population, however, larger-scale epidemiological studies are lacking. AP's prevalence is much higher in special groups, such as among trained musicians, relatives of AP possessors, blind persons, people native in tonal languages, Asian music students or musicians, and those with an autism spectrum disorder. The genetic and environmental factors behind this ability are briefly summarized, followed by a detailed discussion of the solfege methods (movable-do and fixed-do systems) that can facilitate the development of AP.
Humans collaborate with each other on a wide variety of tasks that are often largely improvised and unscripted. In this study, we investigated the dynamics of coordination in a joint musical improvisation task, what the effect of intentions is on coordination, and how musicians propagate these intentions. To quantify coordination within musical trios, we derived per-musician time series of acoustic features to which we applied effective transfer entropy (ETE) and empirical dynamic modeling (EDM), two methods derived from complex systems science. Using ETE allowed us to investigate coordination as directional information flow between musicians, whereas through EDM we conceptualized coordination as the predictability of a complex system. We found that both techniques, when applied to root-mean-square (RMS) amplitude time series, could be used to distinguish coordinating from noncoordinating musicians. Various other feature–technique combinations, such as fractal dimension–ETE and Tonnetz distance–EDM, were also viable. Our results further suggest that coordination improves as an intention gets more shared, that is, as more musicians in the joint improvisation have the same intention. Lastly, we found evidence suggesting that musicians increase the predictability of their playing when seeking to end a performance, though our results did not provide an indication that this was done with the intention of improving coordination with partners.
Suicide is the leading cause of death in young people around the world, with depression as a major driver of these numbers. However, a substantial percentage of young people with depression do not seek professional help. As people in this demographic report listening should be to up to 5 hrs of music per day, music has the potential to serve as an effective method of reaching young people and increase their mental health literacy. MoodyTunes is an in-development mHealth app that aims to increasing mental health awareness in young people and to inform young people about how music can be used as an effective tool for self-regulating mood. Here, we report a mixed methods usability study of MoodyTunes in which a sample of young people (N = 20, age range: 12-25) experienced the app for the first time. A think-aloud method was used to evaluate the app, alongside quantitative survey responses, automated facial analysis data, and interview data. Survey data indicated that the app was perceived in a positive manner, and as effective and well-functioning, whereas aesthetic appeal received the lowest score. As hypothesized, women and younger participants displayed more positive emotions while using the app. Qualitative data indicated several positive aspects such as links to mental health resources and the ability to share music with others, but also highlighted the need to improve the aesthetic appeal, ease of use, and capacity to personalize the app. Future considerations and approaches for mHealth apps, as well as limitations in the present study, are discussed.
Converging evidence from a series of recent lab and corpus-based studies has suggested that a composite model, including a number of predictors that are either intrinsic (e.g., spectral interference) or extrinsic (e.g., cultural familiarity) to chord structure (Smit et al., 2019), best accounts for pleasantness judgments of isolated chords (i.e., simultaneous consonance; Harrison & Pearce, 2020). In the present study, we aimed to explore whether the effects of the 2 most prominent intrinsic predictors in this literature, spectral interference (SI) and harmonicity, are moderated by the presentation of constituent chord tones to both ears (diotically) versus different ears (dichotically). To this end, we conducted 2 experiments in which we presented participants with a set of dyads and collected consonance ratings for each under both diotic and dichotic presentation conditions. To reduce extraneous variance due to chord familiarity, we selected dyads from an unconventional tuning system, the Bohlen-Pierce Chromatic Just scale. Results replicated earlier findings suggesting that both SI and harmonicity independently contribute to consonance judgments of unconventionally tuned chords. Moreover, they provided new evidence that the association between harmonicity and consonance is reliably moderated by presentation mode: In both experiments, the magnitude of this positive association was bolstered when Bohlen-Pierce Chromatic Just dyads were presented diotically rather than dichotically. There was no evidence that presentation mode moderates the association between SI and consonance. Discussion focuses on potential implications of these findings for understanding the low-level processes by which SI and harmonicity independently contribute to simultaneous consonance.
In this study, we aimed to disentangle the differential contributions of 36 musical examples, each in three versions of instrumentation (original, drums only, without drums), to the experience of groove (measured by the factor Urge to Move in the Experience of Groove Questionnaire). The music was unmixed into separate tracks using Spleeter software. Furthermore, musical low-level audio features (e.g., subband spectral flux [SBF]) and person-related factors (musical sophistication and stylistic preferences) were considered as predictors for the groove experience. In an incomplete repeated measures design, each participant (N = 71) listened to 10 of the 36 stimuli in all three versions. Linear mixed models showed that the original version triggered a higher sensation of groove compared to the without-drums version (b = -0.41 with 95% CI [-0.65; -0.16]) and to the drums-only version (b = -0.20 with [-0.44; 0.04]). Low-level audio features predicting a robust high Urge to Move were event density (ED; medium effect), the Short Test of Music Preferences' factor Energetic & Rhythmic (small effect), and the interaction between stimulus version drums-only and SBF 50-100 Hz (medium effect). We suggest that groove does not result from a simple addition of isolated instrumentation components but is the supra-summative outcome of a complex (and not yet fully understood) interaction between various high- and low-level musical factors.
Repetitive exposure, memory, and attention influence time judgments. Empirical research suggests that musical repetition affects the subjective estimation of duration, and that melodic repetition (repetition of melodies) interacts with memory and attention. Nevertheless, the effects of melodic repetition on the subjective estimation of duration remain largely unexplored. We investigate how exact (literal) melodic repetition affects listeners' feelings of the temporal flow of 12-tone compositions. Musicians heard 16 original monodic keyboard pieces that either contained or avoided repetition, subsequently providing prospective estimates of felt duration and average phrase length (in seconds) for each piece. Compositions were structured in either 4- or 16-s phrases. Repetition occurred without lag (immediate) or after a contrasting melody (intercepted). The findings suggest that repetition contracts listeners' feelings of the temporal span of entire pieces and their internal melodies, particularly when the latter are short. Brief melodies repeating without lag felt shorter than those intercepted with contrasting material. We consider previous theories of musical repetition (Huron's habituation-fluency, 2013; Margulis' attention-shift, 2012) to interpret the results.
Musical training likely has a positive impact on executive functions (EFs) and quality of life (QoL). Although enhanced musical ability has been observed in the autistic population, research suggests that autistic traits are associated with worse EF and QoL in both the general and autistic populations. It remains unclear whether autistic traits within the general population are related to better musical abilities, and how that might interact with their EF and QoL. The current study aimed to examine musical sophistication and its relationship with EF, QoL, and autistic traits. One hundred seventy (129 females; M-age = 20.5) university students completed the Goldsmiths Musical Sophistication Index, the Adult Executive Functioning Inventory, the Autism Spectrum Quotient, and the Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory General Core Scales for adults. Although no significant association was found between musical sophistication and autistic traits, musical sophistication was associated with fewer EF difficulties. Moreover, participants with more autistic traits and more EF difficulties tend to have a lower QoL. These effects remained significant after controlling for key demographic variables. EF mediates the effect of musical sophistication on QoL; greater musical sophistication is related to better EF and, in turn, better QoL. When looking into the subscales of the Goldsmiths Musical Sophistication Index, having fewer EF difficulties were linked to better Emotions, Musical Training, and Perceptual and Singing Abilities. Our results offer insights into how musical sophistication is related to EF, autistic traits, and QoL.
Over two studies, we examined the extent to which individual differences in the experience and expression of curiosity are reflected in patterns of music preferences and appreciation. In Study 1. we investigated whether differences in trait curiosity profiles are associated with distinct patterns of preferences for commonly heard music genres, while in Study 2, we asked whether curiosity profiles predict the degree of enjoyment of, and interest in, music from non-Western cultures. We were able to produce clusters similar to the four curiosity profile subgroups previously reported in the literature and show that the subgroup lowest in the experience and expression of curiosity (referred to as the Avoiders) displayed the least appreciation of music, regardless of genre dimension and cultural origin. In contrast, we showed that two subgroups, characterized by relatively high levels of social curiosity and deprivation sensitivity displayed the greatest liking of commonly heard music genres, whereas the subgroup highest in acceptance of novelty-related stress and uncertainty (referred to as the Fascinated) demonstrated the greatest appreciation for non-Western music. Taken together, our findings extend previous work that explores links between personality and music preferences, by showing the relevance of considering individual differences in information-seeking traits. Our work also demonstrates how the study of music listening behaviors may be used to enrich research into curiosity and information-seeking. We recommend that future studies seek to include additional ecologically valid measures of music preferences (e.g., patterns of music streaming activity) in any attempts to corroborate and/or extend these findings.
Individual differences in the preference-for-harmony (PfH)-the tendency to prefer stimuli that represent "good gestalts"-have been found to be relatively consistent across domains of aesthetic judgment. In the present study, we built upon these findings by showing that PfH for color combinations is strongly associated with PfH for isolated musical chords. We also showed that ratings of the harmoniousness of chords are best predicted not by their objective harmonicity-the extent to which their constituent partials resemble a harmonic series-but rather, by their freedom from spectral interference and their familiarity. Additional analyses confirmed that individual differences in PfH are specifically pertinent to aesthetic judgments and not a product of a generalized desire to avoid ambiguity in cognitive processing (i.e., a need for closure). In summary, the results of the study suggest that PfH represents a relatively unique cross-modal influence on aesthetic responses, one that meaningfully contributes to preferences for musical chords.
"Cocktail party" speech perception is largely studied using either linguistic or nonspeech noise maskers. Few studies have addressed how listeners understand speech during concurrent music. We used popular songs to probe the effects of familiarity and different inherent properties of background music (i.e., isolated vocals, isolated instruments, or unprocessed song) on speech recognition. Participants performed an open-set sentence recognition task in the presence of familiar and unfamiliar music maskers (-5 dB signal-to-noise ratio [SNR]) composed of the full unprocessed song, only the instrumentals, or only the vocals. We found that full songs negatively affected recognition performance more so than isolated vocals and instrumentals. Surprisingly, there was also an interaction with music familiarity; well-known music impaired performance in the homologous full song and instrumental conditions. Our results show strong effects of song component and familiarity on speech recognition ability, highlighting interactions between both physical and psychological characteristics of musical noise on task performance. Familiarity impairs speech perception when background music features the instrumentals with or without the vocals. Our findings have implications for understanding the possible facilitation (or interference) of background music during concurrent linguistic tasks including academic study in attempts to promote learning.
Research on tempo perception has shown that it is effectively modeled by tactus rate (musical pulse), and aligns with the theory of metrical hierarchy. This research typically draws from common-practice music (music from the Western European tradition, ca. 1750-1900), and therefore does not address traits found in other repertoire that may contend with these claims. The current study investigated the impact of the backbeat, a ubiquitous rhythmic feature of popular music, on tempo perception. The experiment asked listeners to compare the tempos of pairs of excerpts with the same tactus rate. Pairs of excerpts were always presented with different backbeats, shifting to either half-time or double-time. Results indicated that half-time trials were perceived to be slower, and double-time trials were perceived to be faster, despite identical tactus rates and metrical hierarchies. The findings provide empirical support for the idea that established theories of tempo perception and metrical hierarchy may not entirely extend to other musical styles, and that the backbeat may be a metrical feature of popular music, rather than simply a rhythmic one.
