Cross-Cultural Work in Music Cognition: Challenges, Insights, and Recommendations.

Many foundational questions in the psychology of music require cross-cultural approaches, yet the vast majority of work in the field to date has been conducted with Western participants and Western music. For cross-cultural research to thrive, it will require collaboration between people from different disciplinary backgrounds, as well as strategies for overcoming differences in assumptions, methods, and terminology. This position paper surveys the current state of the field and offers a number of concrete recommendations focused on issues involving ethics, empirical methods, and definitions of "music" and "culture."

Bodystorming: effects of collaboration and familiarity on improvising contemporary dance.

In contemporary dance, cognitive events are not necessarily restricted "to the skin or skull of an individual" (Hutchins in Int Encycl Soc Behav Sci 2068-2072, 2001) but distributed across dancers during collaborative improvisation. There is some experimental evidence of greater output when people perform problem-solving tasks alone. However, when a task is challenging and paired participants are familiar with each other, pairwise and emergent outcomes are more plentiful than solo outcomes. We investigate these factors in the context of dance with the broad hypothesis that innovation is enhanced when dancers improvise together compared with when they improvise alone. Dancers (N = 10) in a professional company improvised for 2 min alone and then with another dancer. Dancer familiarity (familiar, unfamiliar) and task (expressive, non-expressive) were crossed (within-subjects). The improvisations were video-recorded over 2 h in the dancers' usual improvisation space. After each improvisation, the dancers: stated the number of movement ideas expressed and rated task ease, satisfaction, interest, novelty, originality and clarity. In both tasks, there was a tendency for self-report of a greater number of movement ideas expressed in familiar and unfamiliar pairs than alone. Ratings of task ease, satisfaction, interest, clarity, etc. were slightly higher in the unfamiliar pair condition. In the non-expressive task, ratings of the task were higher in pairs (M = 3.02, SD 0.82) than in the solo (M = 2.67, SD 0.96) condition. Distributed creativity, relational cognition and social facilitation are used to interpret the results.

Recognition of dance-like actions: memory for static posture or dynamic movement?

Dance-like actions are complex visual stimuli involving multiple changes in body posture across time and space. Visual perception research has demonstrated a difference between the processing of dynamic body movement and the processing of static body posture. Yet, it is unclear whether this processing dissociation continues during the retention of body movement and body form in visual working memory (VWM). When observing a dance-like action, it is likely that static snapshot images of body posture will be retained alongside dynamic images of the complete motion. Therefore, we hypothesized that, as in perception, posture and movement would differ in VWM. Additionally, if body posture and body movement are separable in VWM, as form- and motion-based items, respectively, then differential interference from intervening form and motion tasks should occur during recognition. In two experiments, we examined these hypotheses. In Experiment 1, the recognition of postures and movements was tested in conditions in which the formats of the study and test stimuli matched (movement-study to movement-test, posture-study to posture-test) or mismatched (movement-study to posture-test, posture-study to movement-test). In Experiment 2, the recognition of postures and movements was compared after intervening form and motion tasks. These results indicated that (1) the recognition of body movement based only on posture is possible, but it is significantly poorer than recognition based on the entire movement stimulus, and (2) form-based interference does not impair memory for movements, although motion-based interference does. We concluded that, whereas static posture information is encoded during the observation of dance-like actions, body movement and body posture differ in VWM.

Network analysis of 16S rRNA sequences suggests microbial keystone taxa contribute to marine N2O cycling.

The mechanisms by which large-scale microbial community function emerges from complex ecological interactions between individual taxa and functional groups remain obscure. We leveraged network analyses of 16S rRNA amplicon sequences obtained over a seven-month timeseries in seasonally anoxic Saanich Inlet (Vancouver Island, Canada) to investigate relationships between microbial community structure and water column N2O cycling. Taxa separately broadly into three discrete subnetworks with contrasting environmental distributions. Oxycline subnetworks were structured around keystone aerobic heterotrophs that correlated with nitrification rates and N2O supersaturations, linking N2O production and accumulation to taxa involved in organic matter remineralization. Keystone taxa implicated in anaerobic carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur cycling in anoxic environments clustered together in a low-oxygen subnetwork that correlated positively with nitrification N2O yields and N2O production from denitrification. Close coupling between N2O producers and consumers in the anoxic basin is indicated by strong correlations between the low-oxygen subnetwork, PICRUSt2-predicted nitrous oxide reductase (nosZ) gene abundances, and N2O undersaturation. This study implicates keystone taxa affiliated with common ODZ groups as a potential control on water column N2O cycling and provides a theoretical basis for further investigations into marine microbial interaction networks.

Measuring engagement among older adults using a multidimensional approach to communication.

Characterizing older adult engagement is important to determine the effectiveness of interventions. Engagement refers to the occupying of oneself in external stimuli and is observable across multiple dimensions of behavior. Engagement of older adults is commonly investigated using a single behavioral dimension. There is a dearth of analytical methods that can simultaneously quantify both verbal and non-verbal forms of communication as proxies for engagement. In this article, we present a multidimensional technique to measure engagement of older adults using techniques appropriate for people with varying degrees of dementia. The new analytical approach measures facial movement, lexical use, and prosodic patterns of speech as indices of affective and behavioral outcomes of engagement. Contexts for engagement included a dyadic reminiscence therapy interview and a 12-week technology-driven group reminiscence therapy. Illustrative examples of the technique are described by two participants from two different groups in a naturalistic setting. Application of these analytical techniques can enhance measurement precision and further develop the science and evidence base, especially for, but not confined to, non-pharmacological interventions.

Amplified inversion effects for moving biological stimuli remain largest for faces and bodies.

Turning an object upside-down disrupts our ability to perceive it accurately, and this inversion effect is disproportionately larger for faces and whole bodies than most other objects. This disproportionate inversion effect is taken as an indicator of holistic processing for these stimuli. Large inversion effects are also found when viewing motion-only information from faces and bodies; however, these have not been compared to other moving objects in an identity task so it is unclear whether inversion effects remain disproportionately larger for faces and bodies when they are engaged in motion. The current study investigated the effect of inversion on static and moving unfamiliar faces, human bodies, and German Shepherd dogs in an old-new recognition memory task. Sensitivity and baseline corrected reaction time (RT) results revealed that inversion effects for faces and whole-bodies remained disproportionately larger than those for German Shepherd dogs, regardless of presentation type, suggesting that both static and moving faces and bodies are processed holistically.

Wired for her face? Male attentional bias for female faces.

Under conditions of inattention or deficits in orienting attention, special classes of stimuli (e.g. faces, bodies) are more likely to be perceived than other stimuli. This suggests that biologically salient visual stimuli automatically recruit attention, even when they are task-irrelevant or ignored. Here we report results from a behavioral experiment with female and male subjects and two magnetoencephalography (MEG) experiments with male subjects only, in which we investigated attentional capture with face and hand stimuli. In both the behavioral and MEG experiments, subjects were required to count the number of gender-specific targets from either face or hand categories within a block of stimuli. In the behavioral experiment, we found that male subjects were significantly more accurate in response to female than male face target blocks. There was no corresponding effect found in response to hand target blocks. Female subjects did not show a gender-based difference in response to face or hand target blocks. MEG results indicated that the male subjects' responses to face stimuli in primary visual cortex (V1) and the face-selective part of the fusiform gyrus (FG) were reduced when male face stimuli were not relevant to the task, whereas female faces maintained a strong response in these areas in both task-relevant and task-irrelevant conditions. These results suggest that within the male brain, female face stimuli are more resilient to suppression than male faces, once attention is drawn to the part of the visual field where the face appears.

Time Course of Creativity in Dance.

Time-motion studies revolutionized the design and efficiency of repetitive work last century. Would time-idea studies revolutionize the rules of intellectual/creative work this century? Collaborating with seven professional dancers, we set out to discover if there were any significant temporal patterns to be found in a timeline coded to show when dancers come up with ideas and when they modify or reject them. On each of 3 days, the dancers were given a choreographic problem (or task) to help them generate a novel, high quality contemporary dance phrase. They were videoed as they worked on this task for sessions of 15, 30, and 45 min. At the end of each 15 min interval during each session, we had them perform the phrase they were creating. They recorded and then coded the video of themselves dancing during these sessions by using a coding language we developed with them to identify when ideas are introduced, modified, and rejected. We found that most ideas are created early and that though these early ideas are aggressively pruned early on, many still make it into the final product. The two competing accounts of creativity in design research make predictions for the temporal structure of creativity. Our results support neither account, rather showing a more blended version of the two. The iterative design view, arguably the dominant view, is that good ideas are the product of generating many ideas, choosing one fairly early, committing to it, and iteratively improving it. The "fail fast fail often" view is that good ideas are the product of rapidly generating and discarding ideas and holding back from early commitment to any one in particular. The result of holding back commitment, typically, is not that an idea is taken up later and then incrementally improved at the last minute, as much as that later designs are not completely novel, instead incorporating the best parts of the entire sequence of ideas. In our study, we found no evidence that one account or the other was more predictive for the domain of contemporary dance. The behavior of the dancers that we studied revealed elements of both, calling into question how predictive these theories are.

Music Playlists for People with Dementia: Trialing A Guide for Caregivers.

BACKGROUND: Music programs have the potential to provide an effective non-pharmacological tool for caregivers to reduce depression and agitation and increase quality of life in people with dementia. However, where such programs are not facilitated by a trained music therapist, caregivers need greater access to information about how to use music most effectively in response to key challenges to care, and how to pre-empt and manage adverse responses. OBJECTIVE: This study reports on the trial of a Guide for use of music with 45 people with dementia and their caregivers in residential care facilities and home-based care. METHODS: The study used a pre-post experimental design in which participants were randomly allocated to a treatment group or a waitlist control group. RESULTS: Improvements to quality of life were found in the experimental group over the 6-week period. Significant increases in Interest, Responsiveness, Initiation, Involvement, and Enjoyment were reported for individual listening sessions. CONCLUSION: The Guide can provide an effective protocol for caregivers to follow in selecting music to manage particular challenges to care, confirming the need for caregivers to be prepared to monitor and manage potential negative responses.

The use of music in aged care facilities: A mixed-methods study.

Music is frequently used in aged care, being easily accessible and cost-effective. Research indicates that certain types of musical engagement hold greater benefits than others. However, it is not clear how effectively music is utilized in aged care facilities and what the barriers are to its further use. This study used a mixed-methods paradigm, surveying 46 aged care workers and conducting in-depth interviews with 5, to explore how music is used in aged care facilities in Australia, staff perceptions of the impact of music on residents, and the barriers to more effective implementation of music in aged care settings.

Immediate Feedback Improves Career Decision Self-Efficacy and Aspirational Alignment.

Misalignment between career and education aspirations has been associated with poorer achievement during adolescence and unstable employment in adulthood. In this study, we evaluated whether a brief in-school intervention improved career decision self-efficacy and aspirational alignment. We sampled 211 teenagers living in disadvantaged areas of Western Sydney, Australia using a quasi-experimental non-equivalent groups design. Students completed pre- and post-questionnaires which measured aspirational alignment and career decision self-efficacy. Students in the intervention condition (n = 102) received automated feedback on the alignment of their career and education aspirations, as well as a career information pamphlet detailing the educational pathways to a range of popular careers. Students in the control condition completed both questionnaires but only received feedback and the pamphlet at the end of the study. The intervention improved alignment of career and education aspirations, as well as increased some dimensions of career decision self-efficacy. Students in the intervention group more frequently identified the correct qualification for their career aspiration in the post-questionnaire (57.9%) compared with the pre-questionnaire (48.1%). Students with misaligned aspirations in the intervention group reported higher self-efficacy for gathering occupational information and selecting goals following the intervention. There were no pre-post differences for students in the control condition. The practical significance of this study is that an easy, low-cost intervention can improve aspirational alignment between career and education aspirations, as well as aspects of career decision self-efficacy.

The black sheep effect: The case of the deviant ingroup robot.

The black sheep effect (BSE) describes the evaluative upgrading of norm-compliant group members (ingroup bias), and evaluative downgrading of deviant (norm-violating) group members, relative to similar outgroup members. While the BSE has been demonstrated extensively in human groups, it has yet to be shown in groups containing robots. This study investigated whether a BSE towards a 'deviant' robot (one low on warmth and competence) could be demonstrated. Participants performed a visual tracking task in a team with two humanoid NAO robots, with one robot being an ingroup member and the other an outgroup member. The robots offered advice to the participants which could be accepted or rejected, proving a measure of trust. Both robots were also evaluated using questionnaires, proxemics, and forced preference choices. Experiment 1 (N = 18) manipulated robot grouping to test our group manipulation generated ingroup bias (a necessary precursor to the BSE) which was supported. Experiment 2 (N = 72) manipulated the grouping, warmth and competence of both robots, predicting a BSE towards deviant ingroup robots, which was supported. Results indicated that a disagreeable ingroup robot is viewed less favourably than a disagreeable outgroup robot. Furthermore, when interacting with two independent robots, a "majority rule" effect can occur in which each robot's opinion is treated as independent vote, with participants significantly more likely to trust two unanimously disagreeing robots. No effect of warmth was found. The impact of these findings for human-robot team composition are discussed.

Long-term memory for contemporary dance is distributed and collaborative.

Professional dancers appear to be the embodied records of works of choreography that have been created, rehearsed and performed. Their precision in recalling extended sequences of movement developed for these works defies the conventional methods used to investigate memory. A distributed cognition view holds that memory will not only be individualistic, but also extended across a dance ensemble. Working closely with the highly skilled dancers of Australian Dance Theatre (ADT), we set out to develop an ecologically valid method that elicited memory recall and lapsing. Dancers were divided into two "teams" with each team asked to choose excerpts for memory recall from the company's extensive repertoire that would challenge individual dancers in the other team. There were 14 trials; 12 involved the dancers recalling dance excerpts on their own (solo condition) and 2 with a partner (duet condition). In the ADT studio, seven dancers recalled (reproduced) as much of the excerpt as possible in the absence of an accompanying soundscape. Recall was extensive, but contained lapses, and these recall failures form the core of the analysis in this study. Four novel types of memory recall were identified: static shapes, isolated movements, partial and full movement sequences; and two strategies for recall: looking for movement by moving and collaborative sketching. Four types of errors were observed: errors of detail, order, omission, and additions. Analysis was conducted through a new method of counting 'choreographic items'. The most detailed recall (73-96%) was for the two duet excerpts with significantly poorer recall of excerpts from complex group sections of a dance. Movement gist was generally retained. The types of recall and types of errors observed pointed to the use of not only procedural memory and chaining but also contextual cues as aids to movement recall. Collaborative elements of recall were observed that suggest the importance of distributed cognition and collective memory within a contemporary dance ensemble.

Musical Features and Affective Responses to Personalized Playlists in People With Probable Dementia.

OBJECTIVES: Personalized music playlists are increasingly being utilized in aged care settings. This study aims to investigate how musical features influence the affective response to music of people with probable dementia. METHODS: A factorial experiment (2 × 2 × 3) was conducted to investigate the influence of tempo (fast, slow), mode (major, minor), and lyrics (none, negative, positive). Ninety-nine people with probable dementia were randomly assigned to 3 conditions, listening to 3 personalized playlists. Galvanic skin response and activation of facial action units were measured. RESULTS: Music with fast tempos increased arousal and reduced enjoyment. Music in minor keys increased activation of the depressor anguli oris, suggesting increased sadness. Lyrics had no significant effect on response. DISCUSSION: The findings demonstrate that both tempo and mode influenced the response of the listener. As well as accounting for personal preferences, music for people with dementia should be carefully targeted toward the affective outcome desired.

Intentionality of a co-actor influences sensorimotor synchronisation with a virtual partner.

Interpersonal sensorimotor synchronisation requires individuals to anticipate and adapt to their partner's movement timing. Research has demonstrated that the intentionality of a co-actor affects joint action planning, however, less is known about whether co-actor intentionality affects sensorimotor synchronisation. Explicit and implicit knowledge of a synchronisation partner's intentionality may influence coordination by modulating temporal anticipation and adaptation processes. We used a computer-controlled virtual partner (VP) consisting of tempo-changing auditory pacing sequences to simulate either an intentional or unintentional synchronisation partner. The VP was programmed to respond to the participant with low or moderate degrees of error correction, simulating a slightly or moderately adaptive human, respectively. In addition, task instructions were manipulated so that participants were told they were synchronising with either another person or a computer. Results indicated that synchronisation performance improved with the more adaptive VP. In addition, there was an influence of the explicit partner instruction, but this was dependent upon the degree of VP adaptivity and was modulated by subjective preferences for either the human or the computer partner. Beliefs about the intentionality of a synchronisation partner may thus influence interpersonal sensorimotor synchronisation in a manner that is modulated by preferences for interacting with intentional agents.

Auditory warnings, signal-referent relations, and natural indicators: re-thinking theory and application.

In auditory warning design the idea of the strength of the association between sound and referent has been pivotal. Research has proceeded via constructing classification systems of signal-referent associations and then testing predictions about ease of learning of different levels of signal-referent relation strength across and within different types of auditory signal (viz., speech, abstract sounds, and auditory icons). However, progress is hampered by terminological confusions and by neglect of the cognitive contribution (viz., learning) of the person or user. Drawing upon semiotics and cognitive psychology, the authors highlight the indexical (as opposed to iconic) nature of so-called auditory icons, and the authors identify the cogniser as an indispensable element in the tripartite nature of signification. Classifications that neglect this third element, defining signal-referent relation strength only dyadically, yield results confounded by learning; classifications that correctly include the triadic relation yield research predictions that are redundant. These limitations of the standard method of constructing and testing classification systems suggest that auditory warning design must take the cognitive contribution of the user into account at an earlier stage in the design process.

Learning of pitch and time structures in an artificial grammar setting.

Despite the empirical evidence for the power of the cognitive capacity of implicit learning of structures and regularities in several modalities and materials, it remains controversial whether implicit learning extends to the learning of temporal structures and regularities. We investigated whether (a) an artificial grammar can be learned equally well when expressed in duration sequences as when expressed in pitch sequences, (b) learning of the artificial grammar in either duration or pitch (as the primary dimension) sequences can be influenced by the properties of the secondary dimension (invariant vs. randomized), and (c) learning can be boosted when the artificial grammar is expressed in both pitch and duration. After an exposure phase with grammatical sequences, learning in a subsequent test phase was assessed in a grammaticality judgment task. Participants in both the pitch and duration conditions showed incidental (not fully implicit) learning of the artificial grammar when the secondary dimension was invariant, but randomizing the pitch sequence prevented learning of the artificial grammar in duration sequences. Expressing the artificial grammar in both pitch and duration resulted in disproportionately better performance, suggesting an interaction between the learning of pitch and temporal structure. The findings are relevant to research investigating the learning of temporal structures and the learning of structures presented simultaneously in 2 dimensions (e.g., space and time, space and objects). By investigating learning, the findings provide further insight into the potential specificity of pitch and time processing, and their integrated versus independent processing, as previously debated in music cognition research. (PsycINFO Database Record

Music and Dementia: Individual Differences in Response to Personalized Playlists.

Personalized music playlists are increasingly being used in health-care contexts to address the psychological and behavioral symptoms in people with dementia. However, there is little understanding of how people with different mental health histories and symptoms respond differently to music. A factorial experiment was conducted to investigate the influence of depression, anxiety, apathy, and cognitive decline on affective response to music. Ninety-nine people with dementia listened to three music playlists based on personal preferences. Activation of facial action units was measured, and behavioural responses continuously observed. Results demonstrated that people with high levels of depression and with symptoms of Alzheimer's type dementia demonstrated increased levels of sadness when listening to music. People with low depression but high levels of apathy demonstrated the highest behavioral evidence of pleasure during music listening, although behavioral evidence declined with severity of cognitive impairment. It is concluded that as well as accounting for personal preferences, music interventions for people with dementia need to take mental health history and symptoms into account.

Exploring collective experience in watching dance through intersubject correlation and functional connectivity of fMRI brain activity.

How the brain contends with naturalistic viewing conditions when it must cope with concurrent streams of diverse sensory inputs and internally generated thoughts is still largely an open question. In this study, we used fMRI to record brain activity while a group of 18 participants watched an edited dance duet accompanied by a soundtrack. After scanning, participants performed a short behavioral task to identify neural correlates of dance segments that could later be recalled. Intersubject correlation (ISC) analysis was used to identify the brain regions correlated among observers, and the results of this ISC map were used to define a set of regions for subsequent analysis of functional connectivity. The resulting network was found to be composed of eight subnetworks and the significance of these subnetworks is discussed. While most subnetworks could be explained by sensory and motor processes, two subnetworks appeared related more to complex cognition. These results inform our understanding of the neural basis of common experience in watching dance and open new directions for the study of complex cognition.

Pitch Perception in the First Year of Life, a Comparison of Lexical Tones and Musical Pitch.

Pitch variation is pervasive in speech, regardless of the language to which infants are exposed. Lexical tone is influenced by general sensitivity to pitch. We examined whether the development in lexical tone perception may develop in parallel with perception of pitch in other cognitive domains namely music. Using a visual fixation paradigm, 100 and one 4- and 12-month-old Dutch infants were tested on their discrimination of Chinese rising and dipping lexical tones as well as comparable three-note musical pitch contours. The 4-month-old infants failed to show a discrimination effect in either condition, whereas the 12-month-old infants succeeded in both conditions. These results suggest that lexical tone perception may reflect and relate to general pitch perception abilities, which may serve as a basis for developing more complex language and musical skills.