Effects of culture and the urban environment on the development of the Ebbinghaus illusion

We investigated the development of visual context effects in the Ebbinghaus illusion across UK people and the Himba of Namibia who are remote from Western cultural influence. Traditional Himba showed no illusion up until 9-10 years, whereas UK children show a robust illusion from 7- to 8-years of age. Greater illusion in UK than traditional Himba children was stable from 9-10 years to adulthood. We also examined the Ebbinghaus illusion in Namibian children growing up in the nearest urban conurbation to the traditional Himba villages, finding a sustained influence of the urban environment across childhood and adulthood. We conclude that cross-cultural differences in perceptual biases to process visual context emerge in early childhood and are influenced by the urban environment

Johannes Brahms’s Ballades, Opus 10

The pianist faces a unique situation, with which only the vocalist can sympathize, and that is the immeasurable amount of literature and repertoire written for the solo piano. There is simply too much solo piano music for the pianist to encounter, hear or learn all of the repertoire. Each pianist is forced to select from each genre, era, and composer the “best” music, or best representative music, to study and perform, and then to reject the rest. Sometimes a given composer’s rejects are labeled with their musical crime: inferior quality, lack of musicality, uncertain origins, failure to be musically satisfying, and so forth; often pieces are simply undervalued in comparison with the composer’s more popular favorites and standards. Johannes Brahms’s Op. 10 Ballades is one of these undervalued set of pieces that has suffered harshly at the hands of academics