Two experiments examined whether discrimination of component pitches in a harmonic interval is affected by the consonance or dissonance of the interval. A single probe pitch (B or C) was followed by a two note harmonic interval including that pitch (e.g., C then C-F# or C-G) or not including it (e.g., C then B-F# or B-G). On each trial, subjects indicated by key press whether the probe note was repeated in the following interval. The target note in the interval either matched the probe or differed by one semitone (B or C). The other note produced a consonant (e.g., perfect fifth) or dissonant (e.g., tritone) context for the target. Pitch discrimination was faster and more accurate in consonant intervals than dissonant, when the context note was higher than the target (Experiment 1), but there was no effect of consonance when the target was higher (Experiment 2). We conclude that the perception of the lower but not the upper pitch in a two note harmonic interval is affected by the interval’s consonance or dissonance. We discuss the results in terms of the theoretical framework of processing fluency and aesthetics proposed by Winkielman, Schwarz, Fazendeiro, and Reber (2003).

The development of singing accuracy, and the relative role of training versus maturation, is a central issue for both music educators and those within music cognition. Although various studies have focused on singing accuracy in different age groups, to date we know of no data sets that maintain the consistency in recruitment, methodology, and measurement that is necessary to make direct comparisons. We report analyses of three data sets that meet these criteria: two groups of children (kindergarten, middle school), and one group of adults (college aged). The data were collected at different times, but used a similar set of tasks and identical scoring procedures. Results indicate considerable improvement in accuracy from kindergarten to late elementary that dramatically reverses such that college students perform at the level of kindergartners. It appears singing accuracy may be related to variables involving singing experience rather than general development, and singing skill could decline over time if not maintained through engagement. A secondary purpose was to explore the efficacy of acoustic scoring for some singing tasks and how well it mimics human judgments of accuracy. The acoustic scoring procedure was highly correlated with expert judgment and could provide a standard approach to scoring that is largely automated. We discuss the potential benefits of a more unified approach to measuring singing accuracy and suggest future research that includes children, adolescents and adults in the sample.

When a musical tone is sounded, most listeners are unable to identify its pitch by name. Those listeners who can identify pitches are said to have absolute pitch perception (AP). A limited subset of musicians possesses AP, and it has been debated whether musicians’ AP interferes with their ability to perceive tonal relationships between pitches, or relative pitch (RP). The present study tested musicians’ discrimination of relative pitch categories, or intervals , by placing absolute pitch values in conflict with relative pitch categories. AP listeners perceived intervals categorically, and their judgments were not affected by absolute pitch values. These results indicate that AP listeners do not infer interval identities from the absolute values between tones, and that RP categories are salient musical concepts in both RP and AP musicianship.

in this review we sought to document the longitudinal course of empirical studies in the journal Music Perception , from the journal’s first issue in 1983 to 2010. The aim was to systematically characterize the nature of empirical research in one of the principal peer-reviewed outlets for work in our field, and to consider these data as a sample representing the overall course of research across the last three decades. Specific domains examined within each article were: Topics, Participants, Stimuli, Materials, and Outcome Measures. In total, 384 empirical articles in the journal were examined. In addition, relevant details were extracted from the full set of 578 articles regarding geographic and disciplinary (departmental) distribution of the authors. Together, the data we report allow an examination of 26-year trends in music research. These are made available in a database that is fully searchable or sortable by interested researchers.

KNOWLEDGE OF MUSICAL RULES AND STRUCTURES HAS been reliably demonstrated in humans of different ages, cultures, and levels of music training, and has been linked to our musical preferences. However, how humans acquire knowledge of and develop preferences for music remains unknown. The present study shows that humans rapidly develop knowledge and preferences when given limited exposure to a new musical system. Using a nontraditional, unfamiliar musical scale (Bohlen-Pierce scale), we created finite-state musical grammars from which we composed sets of melodies.After 25-30 min of passive exposure to the melodies, participants showed extensive learning as characterized by recognition, generalization, and sensitivity to the event frequencies in their given grammar, as well as increased preference for repeated melodies in the new musical system. Results provide evidence that a domain-general statistical learning mechanism may account for much of the human appreciation for music.

DEBELLIS (2009) ARGUES THAT INTROSPECTIONIST music theory, as represented in my book The Cognition of Basic Musical Structures ( CBMS ; Temperley, 2001), makes an ungrounded assumption that the intuitions of the author are shared by other theorists and by experienced listeners generally. But this inductive leap is motivated by experimental and corpus evidence showing that, with regard to basic structures such as meter, listeners largely do hear things in the same way; and this assumption is confirmed in CBMS by corpus tests in which my analyses are compared to those of other listeners. DeBellis suggests that what I was doing in CBMS was not accessing unconscious representations, but rather bringing new representations into existence. But this implies either that experienced listeners in general do not represent meter at all, or that they arrive at metrical analyses by a pre-theoretic process that is not available to music theorists; neither of these options is plausible.

FACIAL EXPRESSIONS ARE USED IN MUSIC PERFORMANCE to communicate structural and emotional intentions. Exposure to emotional facial expressions also may lead to subtle facial movements that mirror those expressions. Seven participants were recorded with motion capture as they watched and imitated phrases of emotional singing. Four different participants were recorded using facial electromyography (EMG) while performing the same task. Participants saw and heard recordings of musical phrases sung with happy, sad, and neutral emotional connotations. They then imitated the target stimulus, paying close attention to the emotion expressed. Facial expressions were monitored during four epochs: (a) during the target; (b) prior to their imitation; (c) during their imitation; and (d) after their imitation. Expressive activity was observed in all epochs, implicating a role of facial expressions in the perception, planning, production, and post-production of emotional singing.

BARON-COHEN'S EMPATHIZER-SYSTEMIZER-THEORY (E-S theory, Baron-Cohen, Knickmeyer, & Belmonte, 2005) distinguishes two general cognitive styles. Empathizing is characterized as the capacity to respond to feeling states of other individuals, whereas systemizing is characterized as the capacity to respond to regularities of objects and events. To investigate these traits within the music domain, a questionnaire study ( N = 442) was conducted. Construct validity and reliability of the measurement instrument were assessed by factor analysis procedures. A simplified unit weighting (SUW) scale was used to determine individual differences in music empathizing (ME) and music systemizing (MS). Significant effects of sex and of music performance experience were observed. A highly similar pattern of results emerged from a replicating survey ( N = 155) using a short-version of the questionnaire. These results suggest that the ME and MS traits corroborate and extend the general E-S theory.

THE PROCESSING OF COMPLEX, METRICALLY ambiguous rhythmic patterns, of the sort found in much popular music, remains poorly understood. We investigated listeners' abilities to perceive, process and produce complex, syncopated rhythmic patterns. Rhythmic complexity was varied along a continuum, quantified using an objective metric of syncopation suggested by Longuet-Higgins and Lee. Participants (a) tapped in time to the rhythms, (b) reproduced the same patterns given a steady pulse, and (c) recognized these patterns when replayed both immediately and after a 24-hour delay. Participants tended to reset the phase of their internally generated pulse with highly syncopated rhythms, reinterpreting or "re-hearing" the rhythm as less syncopated. High complexity in rhythmic stimuli can thus force a reorganization of their cognitive representation. Less complex rhythms were more robustly encoded than more complex syncopated rhythms in the delayed memory task. Syncopated rhythms provide a useful tool for future explorations of human rhythmic competence.

The rigors of establishing innateness and domain specificity pose challenges to adaptationist models of music evolution. In articulating a series of constraints, the authors of the target articles provide strategies for investigating the potential origins of music. We propose additional approaches for exploring theories based on exaptation. We discuss a view of music as a multimodal system of engaging with affect, enabled by capacities of symbolism and a theory of mind.