The repeated recording illusion refers to the phenomenon in which listeners believe to hear different musical stimuli while they are in fact identical. The present paper aims to construct an experimental paradigm to enable the systematic measurement of this phenomenon, investigating potentially related extrinsic and individual difference factors. Participants were told to listen to “different” musical performances of an original piece when in fact they were exposed to the same repeated recording. Each time, the recording was accompanied by a text suggesting a low, medium, or high prestige of the performer. Most participants (75%) believed that they had heard different musical performances. Participants with high levels of neuroticism and openness were significantly more likely to fall for the illusion. While the explicit information presented with the music influenced participants’ ratings significantly, the effect of repeated exposure was only significant in the more familiar music condition. These results suggest that like many other human judgments, evaluations of music also rely on cognitive biases and heuristics that do not depend on the stimuli themselves. The repeated recording illusion can constitute a useful paradigm for investigating nonmusical factors because it allows for the study of their effects while the music remains the same.

Previous research has shown that sleep facilitates skill acquisition by consolidating recent memories into a stabilized form. The way in which sleep benefits the acquisition of a musical skill, however, is unclear. This is because previous studies have not dissociated the extent to which sleep consolidates learned motoric patterns from the conceptual structure of the music. We thus designed two experiments in which pianists performed short pieces – designed to separate conceptual from motoric errors – over the course of a day. In Experiment 1, participants were trained in the morning and tested immediately, 12 hours, and 24 hours after training. While both motor and conceptual errors increased over a waking retention interval, only conceptual errors were significantly reduced after sleep. Moreover, individuals who reported spending more time “playing by ear” showed greater reductions of conceptual errors after sleep. A second control experiment, in which participants were trained in the evening and tested immediately – as well as 12 hours – after training, confirmed that the results from Experiment 1 could not be attributed solely to circadian confounds or to elapsed time since training. Together, these results suggest that conceptual and motor errors consolidate differently and interact with differences in practice style.

Music is one of the most pleasant human experiences, even though it has no direct biological advantage. However little is known about individual differences in how people experience reward in music-related activities. The goal of the present study was to describe the main facets of music experience that could explain the variance observed in how people experience reward associated with music. To this end we developed the Barcelona Music Reward Questionnaire (BMRQ), which was administrated to three large samples. Our results showed that the musical reward experience can be decomposed into five reliable factors: Musical Seeking, Emotion Evocation, Mood Regulation, Social Reward, and Sensory-Motor. These factors were correlated with socio-demographic factors and measures of general sensitivity to reward and hedonic experience. We propose that the five-factor structure of musical reward experience might be very relevant in the study of psychological and neural bases of emotion and pleasure associated to music.

there is overwhelming anecdotal and empirical evidence for individual differences in musical preferences. However, little is known about what drives those preferences. Are people drawn to particular musical genres (e.g., rap, jazz) or to certain musical properties (e.g., lively, loud)? Recent findings suggest that musical preferences can be conceptualized in terms of five orthogonal dimensions: Mellow, Unpretentious, Sophisticated, Intense, and Contemporary (conveniently, MUSIC). The aim of the present research is to replicate and extend that work by empirically examining the hypothesis that musical preferences are based on preferences for particular musical properties and psychological attributes as opposed to musical genres. Findings from Study 1 replicated the five-factor MUSIC structure using musical excerpts from a variety of genres and subgenres and revealed musical attributes that differentiate each factor. Results from Studies 2 and 3 show that the MUSIC structure is recoverable using musical pieces from only the jazz and rock genres, respectively. Taken together, the current work provides strong evidence that preferences for music are determined by specific musical attributes and that the MUSIC model is a robust framework for conceptualizing and measuring such preferences.

Why do People Seek out Music that Makes Them cry? This paradox is a complex one that appears to have no single answer. Rather, numerous factors appear to be interacting in the diverse responses of individuals to music. The present study tested the hypothesis that individual differences in dissociation, absorption, fantasy proneness, empathy, and rumination would be related to the enjoyment of negative emotion in music. Fifty-nine participants completed a survey pertaining to this question. Results revealed statistically significant positive relationships between enjoyment of evoked negative emotion in response to music with both absorption and the recently reported construct of 'music empathy,' Factor analysis and a regression model confirmed these results, and the approach suggests that further study of individual differences will continue to provide new insights into some of the subtleties of the enjoyment of negative emotions in music.

The Role of Anticipatory Auditory Imagery in musical ensemble performance was investigated by examining the relationship between individual differences in auditory imagery and temporal coordination in piano duos. Vividness of imagery for upcoming sounds was assessed in 14 pianists using a task that required the production of rhythmic sequences with or without auditory feedback. Ensemble coordination was assessed by examining temporal relations between body movements (recorded by a motion capture system) and sound onsets (triggered by key strokes on two MIDI pianos) in seven duos playing two contrasting pieces with or without visual contact. Sound synchrony was found to be related to anterior-posterior body sway coordination in a manner that depended upon leader/follower relations between pianists assigned to 'primo' and 'secondo' parts. Furthermore, the quality of coordination, which was not affected markedly by whether pianists were in visual contact, was correlated with individual differences in anticipatory auditory imagery. These findings suggest that auditory imagery facilitates interpersonal coordination by enhancing the operation of internal models that simulate one's own and others' actions during ensemble performance.