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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities

Are Musical Autobiographical Memories Special? It Ain’T Necessarily So, Andrea Halpern Jan 2017

Are Musical Autobiographical Memories Special? It Ain’T Necessarily So, Andrea Halpern

Faculty Journal Articles

We compared young adults' autobiographical (AB) memories involving Music to memories concerning other specific categories and to Everyday AB memories with no specific cue. In all cases, participants reported both their most vivid memory and another AB memory from approximately the same time. We analyzed responses via quantitative ratings scales on aspects such as vividness and importance, as well as via qualitative thematic coding. In the initial phase, comparison of Music-related to Everyday memories suggested all Musical memories had high emotional and vividness characteristics whereas Everyday memories elicited emotion and other heightened responses only in the ‘‘vivid’’ instruction condition. However, …


Musical Expertise Has Minimal Impact On Dual Task Performance, Gianna Cocchini, Maria Serena Filardi, Marcela Crhonkova, Andrea R. Halpern Jan 2017

Musical Expertise Has Minimal Impact On Dual Task Performance, Gianna Cocchini, Maria Serena Filardi, Marcela Crhonkova, Andrea R. Halpern

Faculty Journal Articles

Studies investigating effect of practice on dual task performance have yielded conflicting findings, thus supporting different theoretical accounts about the organisation of attentional resources when tasks are performed simultaneously. Because practice has been proven to reduce the demand of attention for the trained task, the impact of long-lasting training on one task is an ideal way to better understand the mechanisms underlying dual task decline in performance. Our study compared performance during dual task execution in expert musicians compared to controls with little if any musical experience. Participants performed a music recognition task and a visuo-spatial task separately (single task) …


Pitch Imitation Ability In Mental Transformations Of Melodies, Emma B. Greenspon, Peter Q. Pfordresher, Andrea R. Halpern Jan 2017

Pitch Imitation Ability In Mental Transformations Of Melodies, Emma B. Greenspon, Peter Q. Pfordresher, Andrea R. Halpern

Faculty Journal Articles

Previous research suggests that individuals with a vocal pitch imitation deficit (VPID, a.k.a. "poor-pitch singers") experience less vivid auditory images than accurate imitators (pfordresher & halpern, 2013), based on self-report. in the present research we sought to test this proposal directly by having accurate and VPID imitators produce or recognize short melodies based on their original form (untransformed), or after mentally transforming the auditory image of the melody. For the production task, group differences were largest during the untransformed imitation task. importantly, producing mental transformations of the auditory image degraded performance for all participants, but were relatively more disruptive to …


Audience Reactions To Repeating A Piece On A Concert Programme, Andrea R. Halpern, Chloe H.K. Chan, Daniel Müllensiefen, John Sloboda Jan 2017

Audience Reactions To Repeating A Piece On A Concert Programme, Andrea R. Halpern, Chloe H.K. Chan, Daniel Müllensiefen, John Sloboda

Faculty Journal Articles

Repetition of a piece on a concert programme is a well-established, but uncommon performance practice. Musicians have presumed that repetition benefits audience enjoyment and understanding but no research has examined this. In two naturalistic and one lab study, we examined audience reaction to repeated live performances of contemporary pieces played by the same ensemble. In all studies, we asked listeners to rate their enjoyment and willingness to hear the piece again (Affective), and perceived understanding and predicted memory of the piece (Cognitive). In Study 3, we assessed immediate recognition memory of each excerpt. In all studies, Cognitive variables increased significantly. …


That Note Sounds Wrong! Age-Related Effects In Processing Of Musical Expectation, Andrea R. Halpern, Ioanna Zioga, Martin Shankleman, Job Lindsen, Marcus T. Pearce, Joydeep Bhattacharya Jan 2017

That Note Sounds Wrong! Age-Related Effects In Processing Of Musical Expectation, Andrea R. Halpern, Ioanna Zioga, Martin Shankleman, Job Lindsen, Marcus T. Pearce, Joydeep Bhattacharya

Faculty Journal Articles

Part of musical understanding and enjoyment stems from the ability to accurately predict what note (or one of a small set of notes) is likely to follow after hearing the first part of a melody. Selective violation of expectations can add to aesthetic response but radical or frequent violations are likely to be disliked or not comprehended. In this study we investigated whether a lifetime of exposure to music among untrained older adults would enhance their reaction to unexpected endings of unfamiliar melodies. Older and younger adults listened to melodies that had expected or unexpected ending notes, according to Western …