Making sense of background music listening habits: An arousal and task-complexity account

Although listening to background music is common, there is no consensus about its effects on cognitive-task performance. One potential mediating factor that could resolve the inconsistency in findings is arousal. To explore the role of arousal in mediating the effect of background music, this survey study directly explored people’s background music listening habits during a variety of everyday tasks varying in their complexity including studying, reading, driving, and monotonous tasks. Out of the 197 participants, most participants reported listening to background music during driving or monotonous tasks but fewer did so during studying or reading. Participants who did listen to music during studying or reading mostly reported choosing instrumental music and listening to music to calm them down. Contrarily, participants who listened to music during driving or monotonous tasks reported choosing vocal music more often and listening to music to feel energised. In sum, results revealed clearly different patterns in background music listening habits between tasks varying in their complexity that are consistent with arousal mediating the effect of background music. The results also revealed that people have an implicit awareness of the effects of background music and match the music to their needs as dictated by the specific task

The effect of preferred background music on task‐focus in sustained attention

Although many people listen to music while performing tasks that require sustained attention, the literature is inconclusive about its effects. The present study examined performance on a sustained-attention task and explored the effect of background music on the prevalence of different attentional states, founded on the non-linear relationship between arousal and performance. Forty students completed a variation of the Psychomotor Vigilance Task—that has long been used to measure sustained attention—in silence and with their self-selected or preferred music in the background. We collected subjective reports of attentional state (specifically mind-wandering, task-focus and external distraction states) as well as reaction time (RT) measures of performance. Results indicated that background music increased the proportion of task-focus states by decreasing mind-wandering states but did not affect external distraction states. Task-focus states were linked to shorter RTs than mind-wandering or external distraction states; however, background music did not reduce RT or variability of RT significantly compared to silence. These findings show for the first time that preferred background music can enhance task-focused attentional states on a low-demanding sustained-attention task and are compatible with arousal mediating the relationship between background music and task-performance

Reasons for participating in musical activities and their relationship with well-being during and before Covid-19

People tend to participate in musical activities—whether it is making or listening to music—for reasons that are related to basic psychological needs. This study explored whether the coronavirus pandemic (Covid-19) has changed the reasons for participating in musical activities and examined the relationship between these reasons and well-being during as well as before the pandemic. In total, 246 people (between 18 and 35 years) completed a survey during the pandemic, which contained questions relating to the reasons for participating in musical activities—namely the promotion of identity and agency, mood regulation, relaxation and company, enjoyment—and to subjective and eudaimonic well-being before and after the outbreak of the pandemic. Results showed that during the pandemic compared with before, people more often chose music to promote identity and agency, mood regulation, and relaxation and company. Two of the reasons that were invoked more often—namely identity and agency and mood regulation—positively predicted eudaimonic and subjective well-being, respectively, during the pandemic as well as before. Thus, people’s reasons for participating in musical activities during the pandemic compared with before changed in a direction consistent with increasing both eudaimonic and subjective well-being

Is Absolute Pitch a Special Ability or Something We All Have? : A review based on Genetic, Neuroscientific and Experimental Psychological Findings = Különleges képesség az abszolút hallás? : áttekintés genetikai, neurológiai és kísérleti pszichológiai tanulmányok alapján

Absolute pitch (AP), the ability to identify and produce musical pitches without a reference point, is extremely rare and is considered to be a special ability. Although research has focused on this topic for decades, there is no consensus about why AP only occurs in 1 out of 10.000 individuals and how it is acquired. Therefore, the present article aims to review and reconcile the previous findings in order to understand the potential contribution of training and genetics in AP acquisition. Based on experimental psychological and genetic findings, it is concluded that although some components of AP are implicit and exist in the general population, both early musical training and genetic factors are crucial for AP development. This conclusion is supported by neuroscientific findings that provide evidence for differences in activations in specific brain areas between AP possessors and non-possessors. Az abszolút hallás, vagy a zenei hangok referencia pont nélküli felismerése és produkálása, egy különleges és ritkán előforduló képesség. Annak ellenére, hogy a kutatások több mint egy évszázada foglalkoznak ezzel a témával, nincs egyértelmű válasz arra a kérdésre, hogy az abszolút hallás miért csak minden tízezredik emberben fordul elő és hogyan alakul ki. Ezért, a jelen tanulmány célja, hogy áttekintse a korábbi szakirodalmakat és megvizsgálja a zenei képzés és a genetika jelentőségét az abszolút hallás kifejlődésében. Az áttekintő vizsgálatunk a kísérleti pszichológiai és genetikai kutatások alapján azt a következtetést vonta le, hogy habár az abszolút hallás egyes komponensei az általános népességben is jelen vannak, a korai zenei képzés és genetikai tényezők döntő fontosságú az abszolút hallás kifejlődésében. Ezt a következtetést támasztják alá az idegtudományi kutatások eredményei is, amelyek különbségeket mutatnak az abszolút hallással rendelkező és nem rendelkező emberek között az egyes agyi területek aktiválásában

The 14th International Conference of Students of Systematic Musicology (SysMus21)

The 14th International Conference of Students of Systematic Musicology (SysMus21) was held in a hybrid format that allowed both in-person and online participants to join. The SysMus conference series aims to foster a dynamic and interdisciplinary environment for students and early career researchers to share and discuss their work in the fields of systematic musicology and its related disciplines. This year at SysMus21, a total number of 26 oral and 35 poster presentations were held, covering a range of topics including well-being, data science, absorption and imagery, social connections, rhythm and groove, music information retrieval, sociology, cognition, and emotion. An introductory talk was given by Peter Vuust (Center for Music in the Brain, Aarhus University, Denmark), and two keynotes were presented by Jonna Vuoskoski (RITMO Center, University of Oslo, Norway) and Nori Jacoby (Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics, Frankfurt, Germany). Additionally, four workshops were held by Caitlyn Trevor, Joshua Bamford, Niels Christian Hansen, and Svenja Reiner, focusing on research skills relevant for developing a career in academia. In this report, an overview of the conference is provided including a summary of keynotes, presentations, workshops, and social activities, as well as a review of the advantages and challenges of the hybrid set-up

Finite-size criticality in fully connected spin models on superconducting quantum hardware

The emergence of a collective behavior in a many-body system is responsible of the quantum criticality separating different phases of matter. Interacting spin systems in a magnetic field offer a tantalizing opportunity to test different approaches to study quantum phase transitions. In this work, we exploit the new resources offered by quantum algorithms to detect the quantum critical behaviour of fully connected spin$-1/2$ models. We define a suitable Hamiltonian depending on an internal anisotropy parameter $\gamma,$ that allows us to examine three paradigmatic examples of spin models, whose lattice is a fully connected graph. We propose a method based on variational algorithms run on superconducting transmon qubits to detect the critical behavior for systems of finite size. We evaluate the energy gap between the first excited state and the ground state, the magnetization along the easy-axis of the system, and the spin-spin correlations. We finally report a discussion about the feasibility of scaling such approach on a real quantum device for a system having a dimension such that classical simulations start requiring significant resources.Comment: 11 pages, 9 figures. Comments are welcom