Making Sense of Music: Meanings Children and Adolescents Perceive in Musical Materials

What do young people hear when listening to music? Researchers have often privileged uses and functions of music in daily life, rather than exploring how children and adolescents understand music when they listen. This article reports on the third stage of a mixed-method nationwide UK enquiry concerning young people's subjective experiences of music. The third stage focused on meanings 10-18 year olds perceive in music. Participants with varying levels of musical training (N = 84) listened to 20 short musical extracts (30s or less), heard through headphones, to which they gave free written responses. Prior general level of musical involvement (listening, playing and training) was assessed using the Music USE questionnaire. 10-c.13 year olds were more likely than older participants to experience induced affect, use first-person pronouns, describe self-in-scenario visualisations, demonstrate vicarious experience through music. 16-18 year olds often utilized a more objective, detached mode of reporting characterised by a sense of connoisseurship. The mediating cognitive/evaluative effect of formal music education was apparent, both in technical vocabulary used and in an association between self-in-scenario fantasies and less exposure to musical training. Across the age range reports highlighted perceived meanings indirectly related or detached from original source specifications; participants made sense of music in relation to other media experiences, with mental imagery prevalent

Rhythmic entrainment, syncopation and pleasantness

Although several authors have speculated that rhythmic entrainment induces positive affect (e.g. Juslin & Vastfjäll, 2008; Clayton et al. 2004), so far there is no direct experimental evidence to support this claim. Therefore, the experiment hereby reported aimed to test the hypothesis that moving in time with music induces pleasantness and that this effect interacts with the level of syncopation of the music. Six short rhythmic musical stimuli with three levels of syncopation (low, medium, high), were presented to 77 participants, who were divided into two groups: one was asked to move along with the pulse of the music (by tapping with one foot), and the other was asked to listen without moving. The changes in the participants’ affective state were measured by using two techniques: self-report scales of pleasantness and arousal, and an indirect technique consisting of asking participants to evaluate the level of pleasantness expressed by emotionally ambiguous facial expressions –The perceived pleasantness works as an indicator of the observer’s own affective state (Niedenthal et al., 2000)-. It was predicted that: 1) intermediate levels of syncopation would be associated with the most pleasantness, and that 2) these effects would be larger in the ”˜tapping’ condition. The results revealed that even though the data from the indirect technique showed a trend in the predicted direction, there was a great amount of within-subjects variability which made these results unreliable. The data from self-reports supported the first prediction –participants experienced slightly higher levels of positive affect when tapping along to stimuli with a medium level of syncopation-; but not the second prediction –participants in the ”˜tapping’ condition did not experience more pleasantness nor unpleasantness than the participants in the ”˜stationary’ condition. No significant differences were found in any of the measures of arousal. These findings suggest that the effect of musical entrainment on the induction of pleasantness is primarily the result of the expectations aroused by syncopated rhythms, not by the movements made by the listener.References Clayton, M., Sager, R., & Will, U. (2004). In time with the music: The concept of entrainment and its significance for ethnomusicology. ESEM CounterPoint, 1, 1–45.Juslin, P. N., & Västfjäll, D. (2008). Emotional responses to music: the need to consider underlying mechanisms. The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 31(5), 559–75; discussion 575–621. doi:10.1017/S0140525X08005293Niedenthal, P. M., Halberstadt, J. B., & Margolin, J. (2000). Emotional state and the detection of change in facial expression of emotion. European Journal of Social Psychology, 30(May 1999), 211–223

Validation of a dynamic method of measuring households and populations from primary care Electronic Health Records: Cross-sectional comparison with Office for National Statistics Census 2021 estimates

Objectives We have developed a dynamic method for identifying household members from Electronic Health Records (EHR). We compared the 2021 Census estimates of household number and demography with similar estimates derived from primary care EHRs on the Census date using primary care EHRs for the population of north east London (NEL). Method We included 2,115,017 patients registered with a general practitioner on the 2021 Census date in NEL and assigned households from encrypted Unique Property Reference Numbers. We compared household number and size by Local Authority (LA), Middle Layer Super Output Area (MSOA) and area’s Index of Multiple Deprivation quintiles (IMDq) to Office for National Statistics (ONS) 2021 Census estimates and by LA to ONS Admin Based Housing Stock (ABHS) 2020 estimates. We assessed differences in EHR and Census 2021 populations by sex, age, LA, MSOA and IMDq. Sensitivity analyses will exclude those without a recent recorded clinical encounter. Results EHR population estimates (2,115,017) were 116,346 (5.8%) higher than Census estimates (1,998,671), higher among men (9.2%) than women (2.5%) in almost all age groups, especially men aged 30-50 years and higher in the most (8.7%), than in the least (2.5%) deprived IMDq. EHR household estimates (660,789) were 68,047 (9.3%) lower than Census estimates (728,836), and 19,719 (3.1%) higher than ABHS occupied addresses (641,070). EHR household size estimates were 15.6%, 29.2%,12.5% and 8.4% lower for household sizes 1,2 3 and 4, and 13.3%, 42.1%, 82.1% and 195.8% higher for household sizes 5, 6,7 and 8 respectively when compared to Census estimates. EHR population and household estimates were respectively 5-10% higher and 5-11% lower for almost all NEL local authorities. Conclusion EHR- and Census-derived population and household estimates differ, mainly in the prevalence of larger households. While data were extracted on the same date, person-level validation was not possible. Differences may reflect deregistration delay in EHR when changing residence. Analyses based on clinical encounters recency may identify registered patients who are no longer residents

Investigating the influence of music tempo on arousal and behaviour in laboratory virtual roulette

A number of studies indicate that fast music influences performance in everyday activities including shopping and gambling, but the mechanisms through which this effect is realised are not well understood. This study investigates whether fast tempo music influences gambling via an effect on arousal using a laboratory virtual roulette task. One hundred and forty-four participants played virtual roulette whilst listening to fast tempo, slow tempo or no music. Music tempo alone did not influence betting speed, expenditure or risk-taking. Furthermore tempo did not influence participants’ physiological or subjective arousal levels, nor participants’ opinions of the musical stimuli in terms of liking, familiarity, fit or its ability to aid concentration. Our findings suggest that there are some circumstances under which the effect of music tempo does not operate and therefore provides an insight into the limits of music tempo as an explanation for music effects on behaviour. This study has implications for the way that musical characteristics are operationalised in future research into music’s effects on behaviour

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