Expressive suppression and enhancement during music-elicited emotions in younger and older adults

International audienceWhen presented with emotional visual scenes, older adults have been found to be equally capable to regulate emotion expression as younger adults, corroborating the view that emotion regulation skills are maintained or even improved in later adulthood. However, the possibility that gaze direction might help achieve an emotion control goal has not been taken into account, raising the question whether the effortful processing of expressive regulation is really spared from the general age-related decline. Since it does not allow perceptual attention to be redirected away from the emotional source, music provides a useful way to address this question. In the present study, affective, behavioral, and physiological consequences of free expression of emotion, expressive suppression and expressive enhancement were measured in 31 younger and 30 older adults while they listened to positive and negative musical excerpts. The main results indicated that compared to younger adults, older adults reported experiencing less emotional intensity in response to negative music during the free expression of emotion condition. No age difference was found in the ability to amplify or reduce emotional expressions. However, an age-related decline in the ability to reduce the intensity of emotional state and an age-related increase in physiological reactivity were found when participants were instructed to suppress negative expression. Taken together, the current data support previous findings suggesting an age-related change in response to music. They also corroborate the observation that older adults are as efficient as younger adults at controlling behavioral expression. But most importantly, they suggest that when faced with auditory sources of negative emotion, older age does not always confer a better ability to regulate emotions

Automatic estimation of harmonic tension by distributed representation of chords

The buildup and release of a sense of tension is one of the most essential aspects of the process of listening to music. A veridical computational model of perceived musical tension would be an important ingredient for many music informatics applications. The present paper presents a new approach to modelling harmonic tension based on a distributed representation of chords. The starting hypothesis is that harmonic tension as perceived by human listeners is related, among other things, to the expectedness of harmonic units (chords) in their local harmonic context. We train a word2vec-type neural network to learn a vector space that captures contextual similarity and expectedness, and define a quantitative measure of harmonic tension on top of this. To assess the veridicality of the model, we compare its outputs on a number of well-defined chord classes and cadential contexts to results from pertinent empirical studies in music psychology. Statistical analysis shows that the model's predictions conform very well with empirical evidence obtained from human listeners.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figures. To appear in Proceedings of the 13th International Symposium on Computer Music Multidisciplinary Research (CMMR), Porto, Portuga

Claire Gheeraert-Graffeuille, La Cuisine et le Forum. L’Émergence des femmes sur la scène publique pendant la Révolution anglaise (1640-1660)

L’ouvrage de Claire Gheeraert-Graffeuille offre une étude de l’émergence et de la réception de la parole féminine sur la scène publique pendant la période dite de la Révolution anglaise, de la convocation du Parlement en 1640 à la Restauration de la monarchie en 1660. Cette étude se compose de quatre parties qui exposent tour à tour le discours patriarcal alors en vigueur et la place qu’il fait aux femmes dans l’ordre moral et social de l’époque, le rôle laissé et bientôt pris par les femmes ..

The Ulster Earls and Baroque Europe

Recent years have seen an increasing trend in Irish historical studies, away from the strictly national context to a wider European frame. In particular, the “Irish in Europe project”, led by Thomas O’Connor (NUI Maynooth) and Mary Ann Lyons (Saint Patrick’s College, Drumcondra), has resulted in an important exhibition (Strangers to Citizens: the Irish in Europe, 1600-1800) in Dublin, the compilation of databases of Irish soldiers and students in Europe, as well as conferences and publication..

MÚSICA:: UMA ATIVIDADE PROMISSORA PARA A ESTIMULAÇÃO COGNITIVA

O poder da música foi redescoberto pelas neurociências cognitivas, que atualmente explicam seus fundamentos biológicos graças aos métodos de imagem cerebral. Esse texto aborda como a música, graças a seu potencial, pode contribuir no campo da estimulação cognitiva. Após uma revisão sobre o valor social da estimulação cognitiva para a educação e para a saúde, e em seguidaum breve resumo dos diferentes programas atuais de estimulação cognitiva, o texto apresenta os argumentos que levam a entender a música como uma atividade promissora no sentido de responder a alguns grandes desafios, sobretudo no campo do envelhecimento cognitivo e da patologia cerebral. A música teria agido durante a filogênese como uma “tecnologia transformadora da mente” (Patel 2008). Atualmente ela pode ajudar a retomar tais desafios que se apresentam às sociedades modernas