Chapter 5 Audience responses in the light of perception–action theories of empathy

In recent years, empathy has received considerable research attention as a means of understanding a range of psychological phenomena, and it is fast drawing attention within the fields of music psychology and music education. This volume seeks to promote and stimulate further research in music and empathy, with contributions from many of the leading scholars in the fields of music psychology, neuroscience, music philosophy and education. It exposes current developmental, cognitive, social and philosophical perspectives on research in music and empathy, and considers the notion in relation to our engagement with different types of music and media. Following a Prologue, the volume presents twelve chapters organised into two main areas of enquiry. The first section, entitled 'Empathy and Musical Engagement', explores empathy in music education and therapy settings, and provides social, cognitive and philosophical perspectives about empathy in relation to our interaction with music. The second section, entitled 'Empathy in Performing Together', provides insights into the role of empathy across non-Western, classical, jazz and popular performance domains. This book will be of interest to music educators, musicologists, performers and practitioners, as well as scholars from other disciplines with an interest in empathy research

The impact of music and stretched time on pupillary responses and eye movements in slow-motion film scenes

This study investigated the effects of music and playback speed on arousal and visual perception in slow-motion scenes taken from commercial films. Slow-motion scenes are a ubiquitous film technique and highly popular. Yet the psychological effects of mediated time-stretching compared to real-time motion have not been empirically investigated. We hypothesised that music affects arousal and attentional processes. Furthermore, we assumed that playback speed influences viewers’ visual perception, resulting in a higher number of eye movements and larger gaze dispersion. Thirty-nine participants watched three film excerpts in a repeated-measures design in conditions with or without music and in slow motion vs. adapted real-time motion (both visual-only). Results show that music in slow-motion film scenes leads to higher arousal compared to no music as indicated by larger pupil diameters in the former. There was no systematic effect of music on visual perception in terms of eye movements. Playback speed influenced visual perception in eye movement parameters such that slow motion resulted in more and shorter fixations as well as more saccades compared to adapted real-time motion. Furthermore, in slow motion there was a higher gaze dispersion and a smaller centre bias, indicating that individuals attended to more detail in slow motion scenes

Movement Sonification of Musical Gestures: Investigating Perceptual Processes Underlying Musical Performance Movements

(Abstract to follow

Attentional Flexibility and Memory Capacity in Conductors and Pianists

Individuals with high working memory (WM) capacity also tend to have better selective and divided attention. Although both capacities are essential for skilled performance in many areas, evidence for potential training and expertise effects is scarce. We investigated the attentional flexibility of musical conductors by comparing them to equivalently trained pianists. Conductors must focus their attention both on individual instruments and on larger sections of different instruments. We studied students and professionals in both domains to assess the contributions of age and training to these skills. Participants completed WM span tests for auditory and visual (notated) pitches and timing durations, as well as long-term memory tests. In three dichotic attention tasks, they were asked to detect small pitch and timing deviations from two melodic streams presented in baseline (separate streams), selective-attention (concentrating on only one stream), and divided-attention (concentrating on targets in both streams simultaneously) conditions. Conductors were better than pianists in detecting timing deviations in divided attention, and experts detected more targets than students. We found no group differences for WM capacity or for pitch deviations in the attention tasks, even after controlling for the older age of the experts. Musicians\u27 WM spans across multimodal conditions were positively related to selective and divided attention. High-WM participants also had shorter reaction times in selective attention. Taken together, conductors showed higher attentional flexibility in successfully switching between different foci of attention

Score one for jazz: Working memory in jazz and classical musicians

Jazz musicians rely on different skills than do classical musicians for successful performances. We investigated the working memory span of classical and jazz student musicians on musical and nonmusical working memory tasks. College-aged musicians completed the Bucknell Auditory Imagery Scale, followed by verbal working memory tests and musical working memory tests that included visual and auditory presentation modes and written or played recall. Participants were asked to recall the last word (or pitch) from each task after a distraction task, by writing, speaking, or playing the pitch on the piano. Jazz musicians recalled more pitches that were presented in auditory versions and recalled on the piano compared with classical musicians. Scores were positively correlated to years of jazz-playing experience. We conclude that type of training should be considered in studies of musical expertise, and that tests of musicians’ cognitive skills should include domain-specific components

Keeping an eye on the violinist: motor experts show superior timing consistency in a visual perception task

Common coding theory states that perception and action may reciprocally induce each other. Consequently, motor expertise should map onto perceptual consistency in specific tasks such as predicting the exact timing of a musical entry. To test this hypothesis, ten string musicians (motor experts), ten non-string musicians (visual experts), and ten non-musicians were asked to watch progressively occluded video recordings of a first violinist indicating entries to fellow members of a string quartet. Participants synchronised with the perceived timing of the musical entries. Results revealed significant effects of motor expertise on perception. Compared to visual experts and non-musicians, string players not only responded more accurately, but also with less timing variability. These findings provide evidence that motor experts’ consistency in movement execution—a key characteristic of expert motor performance—is mirrored in lower variability in perceptual judgements, indicating close links between action competence and perception

Which part of the conductor's body conveys most expressive information? A spatial occlusion approach

  This study investigated the perception of conductors' body movements under different viewing conditions with a multi-modal within-subjects design. Five conductors with different levels of experience each conducted four excerpts from a Beethoven symphony that varied in musical expressiveness. Video recordings were manipulated according to three occlusion conditions: a) only the face was visible, b) only the arms were visible and c) the whole body was visible in simulated peripheral vision. 127 musically trained or untrained participants first watched, without sound, randomly presented video sequences according to these conditions. For each sequence, they were asked to rate affective and communicative items. Complete video sequences with sound were then presented as a reference and rated similarly. Video sequences that presented the conductors' faces resembled the reference significantly better than the arms-only or the peripheral conditions in terms of expressiveness ratings. Sequences showing the arms were judged higher in amount of information. For the movements of all conductors, clear interpretation differences between the four musical excerpts appeared even for conditions without sound. Differences between conductors were related to their general affective behaviour and to evaluations of four conducting experts. The findings generally highlight the importance of facial affective behaviour for expressive conducting.   

Chapter 5 Audience responses in the light of perception–action theories of empathy

In recent years, empathy has received considerable research attention as a means of understanding a range of psychological phenomena, and it is fast drawing attention within the fields of music psychology and music education. This volume seeks to promote and stimulate further research in music and empathy, with contributions from many of the leading scholars in the fields of music psychology, neuroscience, music philosophy and education. It exposes current developmental, cognitive, social and philosophical perspectives on research in music and empathy, and considers the notion in relation to our engagement with different types of music and media. Following a Prologue, the volume presents twelve chapters organised into two main areas of enquiry. The first section, entitled 'Empathy and Musical Engagement', explores empathy in music education and therapy settings, and provides social, cognitive and philosophical perspectives about empathy in relation to our interaction with music. The second section, entitled 'Empathy in Performing Together', provides insights into the role of empathy across non-Western, classical, jazz and popular performance domains. This book will be of interest to music educators, musicologists, performers and practitioners, as well as scholars from other disciplines with an interest in empathy research

Bewegungssonifikation: Psychologische Grundlagen und Auswirkungen der Verklanglichung menschlicher Handlungen in der Rehabilitation, im Sport und bei Musikaufführungen

Im Rahmen künstlerischer Performances und wissenschaftlicher Forschung gewinnt Bewegungssonifikation als ein wichtiger Teilbereich der Sonifikationsforschung immer mehr an Bedeutung. Sonifikation beschreibt die Übertragung von Daten in Klang und stellt zugleich eine Technik dar, die Klang als Antwort auf Interaktion erzeugt. Bewegungssonifikationen sind spezifischer die Verklanglichung menschlicher Bewegungsdaten. Dabei spielt zumeist die Übertragung von kinematischen oder dynamischen Bewegungsparametern und die Erzeugung intuitiv nachvollziehbarer Bewegungsklänge eine wichtige Rolle. Zentrale psychologische Prozesse und Theorien liegen Anwendungen von Bewegungssonifikationen zu Grunde, wie z. B. die Wahrnehmungs-Handlungs-Kopplung, das Bewegungslernen oder das Embodiment. Disziplinübergreifend sind diese Theorien innerhalb der Sport- und Leistungspsychologie oder der Musikpsychologie gut erforscht, dennoch gibt es ein großes Potential, Effekte auditiven Feedbacks in Form von Bewegungssonifikationen auf grundlegende und spezifische Performance- und Wahrnehmungsprozesse zu untersuchen. Viele Studien, die Bewegungssonifikationen als wissenschaftliche Methode einsetzen, verorten sich im Rehabilitations- und Sportbereich mit dem Ziel, Erkenntnisse über Effekte des Bewegungslernens in speziellen Bewegungsaufgaben zu gewinnen. Es gibt vielversprechende Ergebnisse, die positive Effekte von Bewegungssonifikationen auf die Bewegungsrehabilitation bei Schlaganfällen bezeugen oder auf die verbesserte Gleichgewichts- und Haltungskontrolle. Des Weiteren zeigen Ergebnisse verbesserte Leistungen beim Rudern oder Laufen durch den Einsatz eines auditiven Feedbacks in Form von Bewegungssonifikationen oder natürlichen Bewegungsklängen. Im Musikbereich werden Bewegungssonifikationen oft als Augmentierung digitaler oder traditioneller Musikinstrumente eingesetzt, um zusätzliches auditives Feedback musikalischer Bewegungen als Unterstützung beim Üben des Instrumentes zu nutzen. Zudem berichten viele Tanzstudien über verschiedene Trainingsszenarien, in denen Sonifikationen von Tanzbewegungen neue künstlerische Perspektiven eröffnen und Tänzern in Form einer pädagogischen Rückmeldung helfen können. Wenige Untersuchungen in diesen Bereichen verwendeten jedoch randomisiert-kontrollierte Experimente, stattdessen finden sich zahlreiche Berichte zu Projekten, in deren Rahmen hochtechnologisierte Sonifikationssysteme und Forschungsdesigns für mögliche zukünftige Studien entwickelt wurden. Forscher nutzen Sonifikationen zumeist ohne die verwendeten Sonifikationsstrategien zu evaluieren, weder in Bezug auf Effekte unterschiedlicher Konzepte auditiven Feedbacks auf eine bestimmte Aufgabe, noch im Hinblick auf ästhetische Aspekte des Sonifikationsklanges. Das Ziel dieses Artikels ist es, eine Übersicht zu Forschungsergebnissen aus verschiedenen Anwendungsbereichen von Bewegungssonifikationen zu geben und diese im Hinblick auf beteiligte psychologische Prozesse und verwendete Sonifikationsstrategien zu diskutieren. Dieser Artikel stellt die wichtigsten Definitionen im Bereich der Bewegungssonifikation vor und beschäftigt sich mit zu Grunde liegenden psychologischen Vorgängen. Außerdem fasst er zentrale Studien von Bewegungssonifikationen in der Rehabilitation, im Sport sowie im Musikbereich zusammen und fokussiert dabei sowohl experimentelle Designs als auch Evaluationsansätze von Sonifikationsstrategien. Auf Basis bisheriger Erkenntnisse bietet der Einsatz von Bewegungssonifikationen für die musikpsychologische Forschung ein großes Potential