A survey into the experience of musically induced chills: Emotions, situations and music

Musically induced chills, an emotional response accompanied by gooseflesh, shivers and tingling sensations, are an intriguing aesthetic phenomenon. Although chills have been linked to musical features, personality traits and listening contexts, there exists no comprehensive study that surveys the general characteristics of chills, such as emotional qualities. Thus, the present research aimed to develop a broad understanding of the musical chills response, in terms of emotional characteristics, types of music and chill-inducing features, and listening contexts. Participants (N = 375) completed a survey collecting qualitative responses regarding a specific experience of musical chills, with accompanying quantitative ratings of music qualia and underlying mechanisms. Participants could also describe two more “chills pieces”. Results indicate that chills are often experienced as a mixed and moving emotional state, and commonly occur in isolated listening contexts. Recurring musical features linked to chills include crescendos, the human voice, lyrics, and concepts such as unity and communion in the music. Findings are discussed in terms of theories regarding musical chills, and implications for future empirical testing of the response

A Framework of Distinct Musical Chills: Theoretical, Causal, and Conceptual Evidence

The phenomenon of musical chills has attracted extensive attention in previous music and emotion research, correlating the experience with musical structure, psychoacoustics parameters, individual differences in listeners, and the listening situation. However, there are three crucial limitations in the literature: 1) The emotional characteristics of musical chills have not been explored, and are poorly understood; 2) musical chills have never been causally manipulated, and no theories have been tested; and 3) it is unclear whether chills are a unified psychological construct, or a set of distinct experiences, distinguished at the levels of subjective feeling, psychophysiological response, individual differences, and underlying psychological induction mechanisms. Across five studies, ranging from qualitative surveys to experimental manipulations of musical chills, these limitations were addressed in the current thesis, with results suggesting firstly that musical chills are often mixed emotional experiences, described as moving, bittersweet and intense; secondly, that musical chills can be manipulated, and corresponding theories tested, with a novel experimental paradigm, by removing key sections in a piece or changing psychoacoustic parameters such as loudness and brightness; finally, that there are likely distinct types of chills experiences, which across multimedia are linked to both the affective dimension of valence and individual differences such as trait empathy, and with music through mechanisms of fear and vigilance on the one hand, and social bonding on the other. The studies and results are discussed in terms of two categories of musical chills experiences, culminating in a preliminary Distinct Musical Chills Framework, producing a series of testable hypotheses for future empirical work, and a comprehensive research agenda for the field moving forward

Optical Properties of High-Frequency Radio Sources from the Australia Telescope 20 GHz (AT20G) Survey

Our current understanding of radio-loud AGN comes predominantly from studies at frequencies of 5 GHz and below. With the recent completion of the Australia Telescope 20 GHz (AT20G) survey, we can now gain insight into the high-frequency radio properties of AGN. This paper presents supplementary information on the AT20G sources in the form of optical counterparts and redshifts. Optical counterparts were identified using the SuperCOSMOS database and redshifts were found from either the 6dF Galaxy survey or the literature. We also report 144 new redshifts. For AT20G sources outside the Galactic plane, 78.5% have optical identifications and 30.9% have redshift information. The optical identification rate also increases with increasing flux density. Targets which had optical spectra available were examined to obtain a spectral classification. There appear to be two distinct AT20G populations; the high luminosity quasars that are generally associated with point-source optical counterparts and exhibit strong emission lines in the optical spectrum, and the lower luminosity radio galaxies that are generally associated with passive galaxies in both the optical images and spectroscopic properties. It is suggested that these different populations can be associated with different accretion modes (cold-mode or hot-mode). We find that the cold-mode sources have a steeper spectral index and produce more luminous radio lobes, but generally reside in smaller host galaxies than their hot-mode counterparts. This can be attributed to the fact that they are accreting material more efficiently. Lastly, we compare the AT20G survey with the S-cubed semi-empirical (S3-SEX) models and conclude that the S3-SEX models need refining to correctly model the compact cores of AGN. The AT20G survey provides the ideal sample to do this.Comment: Accepted for publication in MNRA

'Talking’ about music - The emotional content of comments on YouTube videos

In music psychology, research has tackled emotional responses to music from a diversity of perspectives. Some studies use imaging to identify evoked brain responses, or physiological measurements like galvanic skin response to uncover particular specific reactions. Experimental research often provides highly manipulated musical stimuli for either explicit judgement by participants of emotions evoked or implicit judgements of surprise or goodness of fit that can shed light on emotions. Other work uses people’s own words and descriptions of emotional responses to gain insight into their feelings, typically gathered through written accounts or interviews (e.g. Lamont, 2011). While this provides rich data, one challenge of this approach is to gain insights that remain close to the actual experience of listening. This presentation tackles the central question of how people communicate their emotional responses to music through the use of YouTube comments. Listeners’ comments are closely connected to the experience of listening, thereby providing rich, realistic, easily accessible and extensive data. We combine manual (content analysis, coding using existing models of music and emotion) and automated (Evaluative Lexicon) methods. These are brought together to explore how people’s comments map onto existing models of music and emotion such as Juslin’s (2013) BRECVEMA model of emotional mechanisms and the Geneva Music-Induced Affect Checklist (Coutinho & Scherer, 2017), and to shed light on how these models might need to be ‘translated’ or extended to account for the range of expressed responses.We will present findings from a large selection of YouTube videos across a range of musical styles and genres, providing information on a) the proportion of usable comments, b) the distribution of comments relating to the artist, music, lyrics, emotional response and evaluative judgement from the listener, and c) the distribution of various emotional components in comments across different music genres. This will provide important insights into the discourse around music and emotion and the ways in which YouTube listeners share their responses. The research is currently ongoing and results will be available at the conference

Causes of the Antarctic region record high temperature at Signy Island, 30 January 1982

On 30th January 1982, the research station on Signy Island (South Orkney Islands) reported a daily maximum temperature of 19.8 °C. This is a record maximum for any station south of 60°S. We use surface observations, atmospheric reanalyses and high-resolution atmospheric model simulations to investigate the drivers of this extreme event. At the time of the record temperature exceptionally warm air was being advected southwards towards the South Orkney Islands from the subtropical South Atlantic. This air mass cooled significantly at levels below 1 km during its long track over the cold Southern Ocean but remained relatively warm above this level. Atmospheric model simulations show that warm air from upper levels was brought down towards the surface over Signy Island in a föhn wind generated by northerly flow over Coronation Island, a mountainous island just to the north of Signy Island. Modelled temperatures over Signy Island are in good agreement with observations and thus support the hypothesis that the record temperature was caused by a combination of exceptional warm advection with conditions suitable for the generation of föhn. Since conditions conducive to föhn occur relatively frequently, föhn warming may have a significant influence on the local climate and ecology of Signy Island

Bias correction of high-resolution regional climate model precipitation output gives the best estimates of precipitation in Himalayan catchments

The need to provide accurate estimates of precipitation over catchments in the Hindu Kush, Karakoram, and Himalaya mountain ranges for hydrological and water resource systems assessments is widely recognised, as is identifying precipitation extremes for assessing hydro‐meteorological hazards. Here, we investigate the ability of bias‐corrected Weather Research and Forecasting model output at 5 km grid spacing to reproduce the spatiotemporal variability of precipitation for the Beas and Sutlej river basins in the Himalaya, measured by 44 stations spread over the period 1980 to 2012. For the Sutlej basin, we find that the raw (uncorrected) model output generally underestimated annual, monthly, and (particularly low‐intensity) daily precipitation amounts. For the Beas basin, the model performance was better, although biases still existed. It is speculated that the cause of the dry bias over the Sutlej basin is a failure of the model to represent an early‐morning maximum in precipitation during the monsoon period, which is related to excessive precipitation falling upwind. However, applying a non‐linear bias‐correction method to the model output resulted in much better results, which were superior to precipitation estimates from reanalysis and two gridded datasets. These findings highlight the difficulty in using current gridded datasets as input for hydrological modelling in Himalayan catchments, suggesting that bias‐corrected high‐resolution regional climate model output is in fact necessary. Moreover, precipitation extremes over the Beas and Sutlej basins were considerably under‐represented in the gridded datasets, suggesting that bias‐corrected regional climate model output is also necessary for hydro‐meteorological risk assessments in Himalayan catchments

Habit training versus habit training with direct visual biofeedback in adults with chronic constipation: A randomized controlled trial

Aim: The aim was to determine whether specialist-led habit training using Habit Training with Biofeedback (HTBF) is more effective than specialist-led habit training alone (HT) for chronic constipation and whether outcomes of interventions are improved by stratification to HTBF or HT based on diagnosis (functional defaecation disorder vs. no functional defaecation disorder) by radio-physiological investigations (INVEST). Method: This was a parallel three-arm randomized single-blinded controlled trial, permitting two randomized comparisons: HTBF versus HT alone; INVEST- versus no-INVEST-guided intervention. The inclusion criteria were age 18–70 years; attending specialist hospitals in England; self-reported constipation for >6 months; refractory to basic treatment. The main exclusions were secondary constipation and previous experience of the trial interventions. The primary outcome was the mean change in Patient Assessment of Constipation Quality of Life score at 6 months on intention to treat. The secondary outcomes were validated disease-specific and psychological questionnaires and cost-effectiveness (based on EQ-5D-5L). Results: In all, 182 patients were randomized 3:3:2 (target 384): HT n = 68; HTBF n = 68; INVEST-guided treatment n = 46. All interventions had similar reductions (improvement) in the primary outcome at 6 months (approximately −0.8 points of a 4-point scale) with no statistically significant difference between HT and HTBF (−0.03 points; 95% CI −0.33 to 0.27; P = 0.85) or INVEST versus no-INVEST (0.22; −0.11 to 0.55; P = 0.19). Secondary outcomes showed a benefit for all interventions with no evidence of greater cost-effectiveness of HTBF or INVEST compared with HT. Conclusion: The results of the study at 6 months were inconclusive. However, with the caveat of under-recruitment and further attrition at 6 months, a simple, cheaper approach to intervention may be as clinically effective and more cost-effective than more complex and invasive approaches