Psychology of Music

Elementary school children and adults selected for significant pitch identification ability, so called "absolute pitch", were given two tasks to determine some of the characteristics of this skill. In a pitch-naming task, participants gave the note names for tones randomly selected from the chromatic scale either with a conventional piano or pure tone timbre. Naming accuracy was higher among the adults, on trials having the piano timbre, and for certain pitch categories (note names), reflecting more accurate identification of "white key" pitches. Analysis of errors indicated a strong bias towards certain pitch categories, again primarily the "white key" pitches, in both children and adults. Comparison subjects having similar musical training, but no absolute pitch, also showed these biases. In a pitch recognition task, participants were asked to detect additional exemplars of a target tone in an extended series of tones varying in pitch. While those with significant pitch naming skill were quite adept at this task as well, biases associated with pitch category were less apparent. These results suggest a distinction between pitch encoding and naming in those who excel in pitch identification.

This study investigated children's affective and behavioural responses during an evaluative musical testing situation. In particular, the study focused on the effects of test-failure on children's musical test-performance. Fifty-one children (aged 6-10) were individually administered a standardised Melodic Direction Test (Trial 1). Then, they were taught to perform a similar experimenter-devised test on which they encountered success (Trial 2) followed by experimenter-induced failure (Trial 3). After both Trial 2 and 3 they were asked to give their self-perceptions of competence and to predict their performance on subsequent tests. Results showed that, following failure, over half the children experienced a deterioration (maladaptive "helpless" behaviour) in their test-performance on a test identical to Trial 2 (Trial 4); the test-performance of the other children either remained the same or improved (adaptive "mastery" behaviour). Additionally, it was found that children who reported low confidence following failure experienced more performance deterioration than children who reported high post-failure confidence. No differences were found in the test-performance of children identified as mastery and helpless on the standardised test (Trial 1); however, helpless children scored higher than mastery children on the success condition (Trial 2). The study demonstrates that children's performance on tests of music cognition is influenced not only by their levels of cognitive skill but also by their affective and behavioural states during testing. Implications for music practitioners are discussed.

The present studies investigated whether there is a developmental trend from holistic to analytic modes of processing in the perception of melodies. Children (5-to 10-year-olds) and adults were instructed to classify short melodies which varied systematically in four attributes. The subjects could learn the appropriate category assignments either analytically (by focusing on a single attribute) or holistically (by comparing melodies in terms of their overall similarity). The data show that even the youngest children learned the melodic categories more often analytically than holistically. Nevertheless, there was an age effect concerning the attributes that the analytic learners used for their categorisation. Whereas all children preferred attributes that were not melody-specific, especially loudness, adults concentrated on melody-specific attributes, especially melodic contour.

Scores on the Bentley Measures of Musical Ability test (BMMA) for 897 seven-or eight-year-old children were analysed with respect to a number of factors which previous research suggested might be associated with test performance. Comparisons between the 17 schools participating revealed that the same schools tended to produce either high or low scores. Further analyses revealed a significant relationship between BMMA scores and assessments of school achievement (Standard Attainment Targets - SATs). An association was also present between those schools scoring poorly on the BMMA and those containing relatively large numbers of children receiving subsidised school meals. There was also an association with age. No significant relationship was found, however, between handedness and BMMA scores. The results not only identify some specific limitations of the BMMA, but also point to more general problems in interpreting tests designed to screen for musical ability in children.

This paper reports the results of a study on the perception and reproduction of sound durations. First, the duration discrimination abilities of musician and non-musician subjects were measured. An experiment was then carried out to find the effect of frequency difference on duration discrimination in pairs of pure tones (musical note durations). Finally, three experiments were undertaken to investigate any effect of frequency difference on the performed duration of tones. The major findings were: (i) that musicians show lower discrimination thresholds than non-musicians for short stimuli durations (25-100 msec), (ii) that higher frequencies are perceived as being longer in duration than lower frequencies, and (iii) that when the performed sound should be double or longer than a presented tone, subjects typically perform the sound longer than is appropriate.

This study investigated the relation between self-reported affective response to everyday life events and affective responses to music listening. The influence of formal music training on affective responses to music was also assessed. Undergraduate music and non-music majors (N = 107) first completed the Affect Intensity Measure (AIM), then a music-related survey assessing the subjects' affective attitudes to their preferred music (habitual responsiveness) and three similar surveys with corresponding listening examples (situational responsiveness). Two of the four AIM sub-scales showed small significant correlations with habitual responsiveness. AIM sub-scales did not reliably predict situational responsiveness, whereas preference ratings for the examples and habitual responsiveness did. Music majors reported significantly higher responsiveness than non-musicians; however, both groups did not differ reliably on AIM sub-scales. It is argued that reported affective response in music is partially mediated by expertise-related mechanisms.