Prosodic discrimination skills mediate the association between musical aptitude and vocal emotion recognition ability.

The current study tested the hypothesis that the association between musical ability and vocal emotion recognition skills is mediated by accuracy in prosody perception. Furthermore, it was investigated whether this association is primarily related to musical expertise, operationalized by long-term engagement in musical activities, or musical aptitude, operationalized by a test of musical perceptual ability. To this end, we conducted three studies: In Study 1 (N = 85) and Study 2 (N = 93), we developed and validated a new instrument for the assessment of prosodic discrimination ability. In Study 3 (N = 136), we examined whether the association between musical ability and vocal emotion recognition was mediated by prosodic discrimination ability. We found evidence for a full mediation, though only in relation to musical aptitude and not in relation to musical expertise. Taken together, these findings suggest that individuals with high musical aptitude have superior prosody perception skills, which in turn contribute to their vocal emotion recognition skills. Importantly, our results suggest that these benefits are not unique to musicians, but extend to non-musicians with high musical aptitude.

Assessing Temperament Risk Factors in Late Childhood and Early Adolescence: Development and Validation of the Integrative Late Childhood Temperament Inventory.

Childhood temperament has a well-documented influence on later life outcomes, notably behavior problems, quality of interpersonal relationships, and academic achievement. However, there is at present a lack of brief measures that assess temperament characteristics which are represented across models of temperament in the late childhood and early adolescence period. To redress this gap, the aim of the current study was to develop and validate a short questionnaire that extends an earlier integrative measure of temperament, the Integrative Child Temperament Inventory (ICTI) to the late childhood period. The new measure (named Integrative Late Childhood Temperament Inventory, ILCTI) includes all five components of the ICTI (frustration, behavioral inhibition, attention/persistence, activity level, sensory sensitivity), plus affiliation. German- or English-speaking parents rated a total of 525 children, aged 8 to 14 years. Confirmatory factor analyses supported the predicted structure of the new measure. Examination of fit indices and psychometric analyses showed that 24 items are sufficient to capture all six dimensions reliably. Next to convergent validity with established measures of temperament and personality, we also present analyses of associations with measures of externalizing problems, internalizing problems, and school failure all of which support the instrument's clinical utility. Thus, despite its brevity, the ILCTI is a reliable and valid measure of late childhood temperament that can be helpful in assessing risk of developing behavior problems or school failure.

Trajectories of relationship and sexual satisfaction over 2 years in the Covid-19 pandemic: A latent class analysis.

OBJECTIVE: Previous research on the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on romantic relationships has mainly concentrated on short-term effects and average trends of change. This study aimed to explore different trajectories of relationship and sexual satisfaction from April 2020 to March 2022. METHOD: Including a cross-national sample of 2859 individuals, a latent class approach was applied to identify subgroups of sexual and relationship satisfaction trajectories. Participants' satisfaction levels, attachment style, psychological symptoms, life satisfaction, and living arrangements were taken into account. RESULTS: Three latent classes were identified for both relationship and sexual satisfaction: (1) a group with high satisfaction levels but a slightly declining trajectory, (2) a group with low satisfaction levels but an ascending trajectory, and (3) a fluctuating group. Living apart, having children, psychological symptoms, low life satisfaction, and avoidant attachment characterized the two groups with low or fluctuating trajectories. CONCLUSIONS: The findings suggest that there were different trajectories of relationship and sexual satisfaction during the pandemic, which can be predicted by individual dispositions. Even 2 years after the pandemic, its effects had not disappeared.

The Emotion-to-Music Mapping Atlas (EMMA): A systematically organized online database of emotionally evocative music excerpts.

Selecting appropriate musical stimuli to induce specific emotions represents a recurring challenge in music and emotion research. Most existing stimuli have been categorized according to taxonomies derived from general emotion models (e.g., basic emotions, affective circumplex), have been rated for perceived emotions, and are rarely defined in terms of interrater agreement. To redress these limitations, we present research that served in the development of a new interactive online database, including an initial set of 364 music excerpts from three different genres (classical, pop, and hip/hop) that were rated for felt emotion using the Geneva Emotion Music Scale (GEMS), a music-specific emotion scale. The sample comprised 517 English- and German-speaking participants and each excerpt was rated by an average of 28.76 participants (SD = 7.99). Data analyses focused on research questions that are of particular relevance for musical database development, notably the number of raters required to obtain stable estimates of emotional effects of music and the adequacy of the GEMS as a tool for describing music-evoked emotions across three prominent music genres. Overall, our findings suggest that 10-20 raters are sufficient to obtain stable estimates of emotional effects of music excerpts in most cases, and that the GEMS shows promise as a valid and comprehensive annotation tool for music databases.

Online assessment of musical ability in 10 minutes: Development and validation of the Micro-PROMS.

We describe the development and validation of a test battery to assess musical ability that taps into a broad range of music perception skills and can be administered in 10 minutes or less. In Study 1, we derived four very brief versions from the Profile of Music Perception Skills (PROMS) and examined their properties in a sample of 280 participants. In Study 2 (N = 109), we administered the version retained from Study 1-termed Micro-PROMS-with the full-length PROMS, finding a short-to-long-form correlation of r = .72. In Study 3 (N = 198), we removed redundant trials and examined test-retest reliability as well as convergent, discriminant, and criterion validity. Results showed adequate internal consistency ( ω ¯ = .73) and test-retest reliability (ICC = .83). Findings supported convergent validity of the Micro-PROMS (r = .59 with the MET, p < .01) as well as discriminant validity with short-term and working memory (r ≲ .20). Criterion-related validity was evidenced by significant correlations of the Micro-PROMS with external indicators of musical proficiency ( r ¯ = .37, ps < .01), and with Gold-MSI General Musical Sophistication (r = .51, p<.01). In virtue of its brevity, psychometric qualities, and suitability for online administration, the battery fills a gap in the tools available to objectively assess musical ability.

Exploring emotions in Bach chorales: a multi-modal perceptual and data-driven study.

The relationship between music and emotion has been addressed within several disciplines, from more historico-philosophical and anthropological ones, such as musicology and ethnomusicology, to others that are traditionally more empirical and technological, such as psychology and computer science. Yet, understanding the link between music and emotion is limited by the scarce interconnections between these disciplines. Trying to narrow this gap, this data-driven exploratory study aims at assessing the relationship between linguistic, symbolic and acoustic features-extracted from lyrics, music notation and audio recordings-and perception of emotion. Employing a listening experiment, statistical analysis and unsupervised machine learning, we investigate how a data-driven multi-modal approach can be used to explore the emotions conveyed by eight Bach chorales. Through a feature selection strategy based on a set of more than 300 Bach chorales and a transdisciplinary methodology integrating approaches from psychology, musicology and computer science, we aim to initiate an efficient dialogue between disciplines, able to promote a more integrative and holistic understanding of emotions in music.

Associations between early childhood poverty and cognitive functioning throughout childhood and adolescence: A 14-year prospective longitudinal analysis of the Mauritius Child Health Project.

Associations between childhood poverty and cognitive outcomes have been examined from multiple perspectives. However, most evidence is based on cross-sectional data or longitudinal data covering only segments of the developmental process. Moreover, previous longitudinal research has mostly relied on data from Western nations, limiting insights of poverty dynamics in low- and middle-income countries. Here, we use data from the Mauritius Child Health Project, a large-scale prospective longitudinal study conducted in a then low-income country, to examine long-term associations between poverty in early childhood and cognitive performance across childhood and adolescence. Poverty-related factors were assessed at age 3 years and comprised indicators of psychosocial adversity and malnutrition. Cognitive functioning was assessed at ages 3 and 11 years by using standardized intelligence measures and at age 17 years by means of a computerized test battery. Using multiple hierarchical regression models, we found that chronic malnutrition and parental characteristics showed similar-sized, independent associations with initial cognitive functioning at age 3 as well as at age 11 years. For age 17 years, however, associations with early childhood risk factors vanished and instead, cognitive functioning was predicted by performance on prior cognitive assessments. Sex was also found to be a powerful predictor of cognitive trajectories, with boys improving and girls worsening over time, regardless of the level of their initial exposure to risk. The current findings indicate that, to prevent cognitive impairment, interventions tackling poverty and malnutrition should focus on the infancy period and be designed in a gender-sensitive way.

A prospective study of relationship and sexual satisfaction during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic: The role of dispositional vulnerabilities and external stressors.

OBJECTIVE: The COVID-19 pandemic had a strong impact on many aspects of life, particularly social relationships. Although there is some evidence regarding short-term effects of the pandemic on cohabitating couples or individuals, it is unclear to what extent these effects persist over time and whether they also apply to noncohabitating individuals. The purpose of this study was to investigate changes in relationship and sexual satisfaction among both cohabitating and noncohabitating individuals during the first year of the pandemic and to examine the extent to which these changes could be accounted for by personal vulnerabilities, pandemic-related stressors, and their interaction. METHOD: We assessed relationship and sexual satisfaction longitudinally with a cross-national sample (N = 2859) that included five prospective measurement time points and analyzed the data with multilevel models. RESULTS: We observed a decrease in relationship satisfaction over the course of the study, especially among noncohabitants. Sexual satisfaction, in turn, conformed to a quadratic trend among noncohabitants while changing only minimally in cohabitating individuals. Of the individual vulnerabilities examined, attachment avoidance was the greatest risk factor for both relationship and sexual satisfaction. Among pandemic-related stressors, mobility restrictions had a negative impact into the relationship and sexual satisfaction of noncohabitating individuals. CONCLUSIONS: Although the pandemic generally showed negative effects on close relationships, these effects varied depending on the type of couple (cohabitants or noncohabitants), the component of relationship satisfaction (relationship satisfaction or sexual satisfaction), the time interval (curfew period or not), and also individual dispositions (especially attachment avoidance).

Musical emotions affect memory for emotional pictures.

Music is widely known for its ability to evoke emotions. However, assessing specific music-evoked emotions other than through verbal self-reports has proven difficult. In the present study, we explored whether mood-congruency effects could be used as indirect measures of specific music-evoked emotions. First, participants listened to 15 music excerpts chosen to induce different emotions; after each excerpt, they were required to look at four different pictures. The pictures could either: (1) convey an emotion congruent with that conveyed by the music (i.e., congruent pictures); (2) convey a different emotion than that of the music, or convey no emotion (i.e., incongruent pictures). Second, participants completed a recognition task that included new pictures as well as already seen congruent and incongruent pictures. From previous findings about mood-congruency effects, we hypothesized that if music evokes a given emotion, this would facilitate memorization of pictures that convey the same emotion. Results revealed that accuracy in the recognition task was indeed higher for emotionally congruent pictures than for emotionally incongruent ones. The results suggest that music-evoked emotions have an influence on subsequent cognitive processing of emotional stimuli, suggesting a role of mood-congruency based recall tasks as non-verbal methods for the identification of specific music-evoked emotions.

Relationship satisfaction in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic: A cross-national examination of situational, dispositional, and relationship factors.

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has had a large impact on various aspects of life, but questions about its effects on close relationships remain largely unanswered. In the present study, we examined perceived changes in relationship satisfaction at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic by using an international sample of 3,243 individuals from 67 different countries, mostly from Italy, the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. In April and May 2020, participants responded to an online survey that included questions about relationship satisfaction, their satisfaction before the pandemic, other relationship aspects (e.g., shared time), special circumstances (e.g., mobility restrictions), and enduring dispositions (e.g., insecure attachment). A decline in time shared with one's partner was most strongly associated with perceived decreases in relationship satisfaction, resulting in a different pattern of findings for cohabiting and non-cohabiting individuals. Among the most influential moderators were anxious and avoidant attachment. The findings offer insights into both aggravating and protecting factors in couples' responses to pandemic-related stressors.

The Tapping-PROMS: A test for the assessment of sensorimotor rhythmic abilities.

Sensorimotor synchronization is a longstanding paradigm in the analysis of isochronous beat tapping. Assessing the finger tapping of complex rhythmic patterns is far less explored and considerably more complex to analyze. Hence, whereas several instruments to assess tempo or beat tapping ability exist, there is at present a shortage of paradigms and tools for the assessment of the ability to tap to complex rhythmic patterns. To redress this limitation, we developed a standardized rhythm tapping test comprising test items of different complexity. The items were taken from the rhythm and tempo subtests of the Profile of Music Perception Skills (PROMS), and administered as tapping items to 40 participants (20 women). Overall, results showed satisfactory psychometric properties for internal consistency and test-retest reliability. Convergent, discriminant, and criterion validity correlations fell in line with expectations. Specifically, performance in rhythm tapping was correlated more strongly with performance in rhythm perception than in tempo perception, whereas performance in tempo tapping was more strongly correlated with performance in tempo than rhythm perception. Both tapping tasks were only marginally correlated with non-temporal perception tasks. In combination, the tapping tasks explained variance in external indicators of musical proficiency above and beyond the perceptual PROMS tasks. This tool allows for the assessment of complex rhythmic tapping skills in about 15 min, thus providing a useful addition to existing music aptitude batteries.

Is being gender nonconforming distressing? It depends where you live: gender equality across 15 nations predicts how much gender nonconformity is related to self-esteem.

BACKGROUND: Individuals exhibiting gender nonconforming behaviors experience low self-esteem and a number of other mental health conditions, including elevated suicide risk. Most of the relevant evidence is confined to US studies, however. Adopting a cross-national approach, we examined the pervasiveness of the psychological burden associated with gender nonconformity. Because self-esteem is sensitive to the fulfillment of societal expectations for gender conformity, we reasoned that the relationship between gender conformity and self-esteem ought to decrease as societies become less restrictive in their gender norms. METHODS: To test this proposition, we conducted two studies including 18 national samples from 15 countries varying in gender equality. Participants responded to an online survey that included measures of gender conformity and self-esteem (N = 4486). RESULTS: Using multilevel analyses and meta-analytic statistics over the samples of both studies, we found that as gender equality increased, the association between gender conformity and self-esteem decreased. CONCLUSIONS: The results suggest that rather than being inherently noxious, gender non-conformity becomes detrimental to self-esteem when it clashes with restrictive gender role norms that are enacted by the macrosocial context. We suggest that previous findings on psychological problems related to gender nonconformity be considered within a broader macrosocial context that may constrain people's freedom to move against gender role norms.

Social bonding and credible signaling hypotheses largely disregard the gap between animal vocalizations and human music.

Mehr et al. propose a theory of the evolution music that can potentially account for most animal vocalizations as precursors to human music. Therein lies its appeal but also its Achilles' heel, for the wider the range of animal vocalizations treated as premusical expressions, the wider the gap to human music. Here, I offer a few critical observations and constructive suggestions that I hope will help the authors strengthen their case.

Early Detection of Temperament Risk Factors: A Comparison of Clinically Referred and General Population Children.

Despite an extensive literature on associations between early childhood temperament and behavior problems, most of this evidence is based on general population samples. Hence, relatively little is known about the temperament characteristics of children who have been referred for in- or outpatient treatment of emotional and/or behavioral problems. Whether temperament-to-behavior problems identified in community samples would also be found in samples of clinically referred children is poorly understood. To redress this limitation, we compared temperament attributes of a predominantly preschool-aged sample of children referred for treatment of emotional and/or behavioral disorders (N = 87) with those from a similarly-aged general population sample (N = 85) by using the Integrative Child Temperament Screener (ICTS)-a new nine-item scale to identify clinically significant temperament attributes. Behavioral symptoms in the clinical sample were assessed through diagnostic interviews in combination with the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL), which was also administered to the general population children. Compared with general population children, referred children exhibited substantially higher scores on all ICTS subscales except behavioral inhibition. Furthermore, areas under the curve analyses showed that discrimination of both groups based on CBCL scales could be improved by adding the ICTS. Overall, the findings fill a long-standing gap in evidence regarding temperament characteristics of children with serious emotional and/or behavioral symptoms and suggest a useful role for the ICTS in assessment, screening, and prevention.

Correction to: Identifying child temperament risk factors from 2 to 8 years of age: validation of a brief temperament screening tool in the US, Europe, and China.

Appendix excluded from article CC BY licence. All rights reserved.

Identifying child temperament risk factors from 2 to 8 years of age: validation of a brief temperament screening tool in the US, Europe, and China.

Despite ample evidence linking particular child temperament characteristics to behavior disorders later in life, there is currently a lack of temperament measures that can be used early, easily, and widely for screening purposes. To redress this gap, the current research aimed at developing a very brief scale of child temperament characteristics that have been found to predict behavior problems over the long term, are represented across models of temperament, and have the potential to exhibit measurement invariance over different countries and childhood periods. The new scale was derived from the Integrative Child Temperament Inventory, a 30-item measure to assess five well-established temperament dimensions, and examined in three studies with samples of children aged between 2 and 8 years across five countries: The United States, the United Kingdom, China, Germany, and Spain (N = 13,425; boys 55.96%). The studies included tests of measurements invariance, of convergent validity with established measures of temperament, and of criterion validity with measures of behavior problems. The scale exhibited full metric invariance and partial scalar invariance across age groups (toddlerhood, preschool, school age) and countries. Test-retest reliability, interrater reliability across teachers, and convergent and criterion validity were adequate. Preliminary data on the measure's clinical utility suggest a favorable balance between brevity and screening accuracy. Altogether, this study suggests that early childhood temperament characteristics placing children at risk for developing behavior problems much later in life can be quickly, effectively, and commensurably assessed across different countries and age groups.

Assessing musical ability quickly and objectively: development and validation of the Short-PROMS and the Mini-PROMS.

The study of musical ability has gained considerable traction across disciplines in recent years. In comparison, less effort has been invested in the development of sound measures of musical ability. To redress this gap, we conducted four studies to empirically validate two brief measures derived from the Profile of Music Perception Skills (PROMS)-an exceptionally inclusive battery of musical abilities that takes about 1 h to complete. In the Short-PROMS, test duration was reduced to less than half an hour by substantially reducing the number of trials per subtest. In the Mini-PROMS, the number of subtests was reduced to four, resulting in a battery that takes 15 min to complete. Both measures exhibited good internal consistency and retest reliability. Support for convergent, discriminant, and criterion validity was found across the studies. Additional strengths of the new instruments include their suitability for online administration and a feature called Modular PROMS, which offers researchers the possibility to request customized batteries that may include any combination of the subtests. The role of refining objective assessment instruments in research on music and the mind is discussed.

Effects of measurement aggregation on predicting externalizing problems from preschool behaviour.

In long-term studies of psychological development, the initial assessment of etiologically significant child behaviours is often carried out at a single point in time only. However, one-time assessments of behaviour are likely to possess limited reliability, leading to attenuated longitudinal correlation coefficient magnitudes. How much this bias might have affected behavioural continuity estimates in longitudinal research is presently unknown. Using a data set from the Mauritius Child Health Project, we particularize the attenuating effects of single-occasion behavioural assessments on consistency estimates of impulsive-aggressive behaviour over time. Specifically, two nursery teachers provided 15 consecutive weekly ratings of the aggressive behaviour of 99 four-year-old children. The same children were reassessed for the presence of externalizing behaviour problems at the ages of 8 and 10. There were substantial increases in both reliability and predictive correlation coefficient magnitudes when the preschool scores were aggregated across several weekly ratings. A further increase resulted after the two outcome assessments were combined into a composite score of school-age externalizing symptoms. A generalized procedure, developed from the correction for attenuation formula, is introduced to describe the relation of aggregation to predictive validity in longitudinal research.