Gunter Kreutz

Personality and Performance Anxiety Among Professional Orchestra Musicians

The objective of the present study was to examine the influence of personality traits and coping strategies on performance anxiety among professional orchestra musicians. The sample consisted of 122 members of six German symphony and opera orchestras. The musicians were asked to complete questionnaires measuring various personality traits. In addition, shortly before a normal rehearsal and a public performance, they also gave details about their state-coping and their present level of performance anxiety. The latter was measured by four aspects: Lack of confidence, worry, emotionality, and physical symptoms. These aspects of performance anxiety have different patterns of predicting personality traits and the patterns also differ between the rehearsal and the performance situation. Musicians suffering from performance anxiety will try all manner of strategies before a rehearsal or performance to cope with the situation, even if not all of these strategies are appropriate for reducing performance anxiety.

Emotional and Neurohumoral Responses to Dancing Tango Argentino: The Effects of Music and Partner

The present study examines the emotional and hormonal responses to tango dancing and the specific influences of the presence of music and partner on these responses. Twenty-two tango dancers were assessed within four conditions, in which the presence of music and a dance partner while dancing were varied in a 2

Does music training enhance working memory performance? Findings from a quasi-experimental longitudinal study

Instrumental music training has been shown to enhance cognitive processing beyond general intelligence. We examined this assumption with regard to working memory performance in primary school-aged children (N = 50; 7–8 years of age) within a longitudinal study design. Half of the children participated in an extended music education program with 45 minutes of weekly instrumental music training, while the other half received extended natural science training. Each child completed a computerized test battery three times over a period of 18 months. The battery included seven subtests, which address the central executive, the phonological loop and the visuospatial sketchpad components of Baddeley’s working memory model. Socio-economic background and basic cognitive functions were assessed for each participant and used as covariates in subsequent analyses of variance (ANOVAs). Significant group by time interactions were found for phonological loop and central executive subtests, indicating a superior developmental course in children with music training compared to the control group. These results confirm previous findings concerning music training and cognitive performance. It is suggested that children receiving music training benefit specifically in those aspects of cognitive functioning that are strongly related to auditory information processing.

Effects of a School-Based Instrumental Music Program on Verbal and Visual Memory in Primary School Children: A Longitudinal Study

This study examined the effects of a school-based instrumental training program on the development of verbal and visual memory skills in primary school children. Participants either took part in a music program with weekly 45 min sessions of instrumental lessons in small groups at school, or they received extended natural science training. A third group of children did not receive additional training. Each child completed verbal and visual memory tests three times over a period of 18 months. Significant Group by Time interactions were found in the measures of verbal memory. Children in the music group showed greater improvements than children in the control groups after controlling for children’s socio-economic background, age, and IQ. No differences between groups were found in the visual memory tests. These findings are consistent with and extend previous research by suggesting that children receiving music training may benefit from improvements in their verbal memory skills.

Kardiovaskuläre Wirkungen des Musikhörens: Die Bedeutung von Expertise und musikalischem Ausdruck

Vorangegangene Untersuchungen haben gezeigt, dass kardiovaskulare Reaktionen beim Musikhoren nicht nur durch Eigenschaften der Musik, sondern auch durch die Biographiedes Rezipienten beeinflusst werden können. In der vorliegenden Studie sollten die emotionalen und kardiovaskulären Wirkungen von „frohlicher” und „trauriger” Musik bei Musikern und Nichtmusikern untersucht werden. Es wurde erwartet, dass Musiker eine ausgeprägtere Reaktivität aufweisen als Nichtmusiker, und dass sich die Reaktionsmuster zu „fröhlicher” und „trauriger” Musik voneinander unterscheiden. Insgesamt 55 männliche und weibliche Musiker und Nichtmusiker nahmen an der Studie teil. Den Probanden wurden in Blocks von 2 Minuten Auszuge aus je drei fröhlichen bzw. traurigen Musikstücken dargeboten. Dabei wurden jeweils subjektive Beurteilungen der Musikstücke und die positiven und negativen Affektreaktionen erfragt, sowie die kardiovaskularen Reaktionen impedanzkardiographisch aufgezeichnet. Die Ergebnisse zeigten, dass sich die intendierten Emotionen der Musik sowohl in denUrteilen uber die Musikstücke als auch in den affektiven Reaktionen der Probanden widerspiegelten. Physiologisch reagierten die Nichtmusiker zwar mit geringerer sympathischer Aktivierung als die Musiker, doch zeigten sich bei letzteren keine Anzeichen einer psychischoder physisch erhohten Reagibilitat auf die Musik. „Frohliche” und „traurige” Musikstückeführten lediglich zu unterschiedlichen Effekten in der respiratorischen Sinusarhythmie. Darüber hinaus traten unabhängig von Emotion, Musikbiographie und Geschlecht deutliche Interaktionseffekte zwischen Reihenfolge und Emotion in acht von vierzehn kardiovaskularen Parametern auf. Unsere Ergebnisse legen eine tonische Komponente in der physiologischen Reagibilität nahe. Diesem Zeiteffekt scheinen musikalische bzw. musikbiographisch bedingte Einflüsse nur untergeordnet zu sein.

Bodily Movements Influence Heart Rate Variability (HRV) Responses to Isolated Melodic Intervals

The present study examines psychophysiological responses to ascending melodic intervals and the specific influences of bodily movement. A total of 15 adult listeners were assessed in 2 conditions with and without voluntary bodily movements during listening to major third and major seventh intervals, while their heart rate was continuously recorded. Heart rate as well as the standard deviation of normal-to normal RR-intervals in the electrocardiogram within a given time interval (SD-NN-RR) served as dependent measures, the latter indicating parasympathetic activation. A repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) revealed a significant interaction between interval and condition. Listening to the major seventh interval led to significantly higher SD-NN-RR values than listening to the major third in the condition without voluntary movement. With movement, these differences were not observed. The study extends previous findings by showing that task demands strongly influence physiological responses to isolated musical materials.

A shade of grey : Negative associations with amateur choral singing

Background: Amateur choral singing has been associated with a range of beneficial influences on perceived mental and physical well-being and health. However, it is unclear to what extent negative experiences exist that may be related to singing in choral societies. Aims: The main focus of this study was to explore negative experiences of longstanding members of choral societies. In particular, themes of such experiences were to be identified as well as their prevalence. Methods: Written responses to open-ended questions (n = 753) from a large-scale survey (N = 3145) on negative experiences in association with choral singing were submitted to content analysis to identify themes and issues. Two independent jurors then assessed a random selection of a 100 responses to assess the prevalence of themes. Results: Conductor (prevalence: 50%), fellow choristers (prevalence: 38.1%), and performance aspects (prevalence: 13.6%) were identified as main themes of negative experiences in both content and simple kappa analyses. Conclusions: These results suggest that social problems as well as conflicting aesthetic goals dominate negative associations with amateur choral singing.

Health-promoting behaviors in South African music students: A replication study

The study evaluated self-reported health-promoting behaviors and psychosocial well-being of undergraduate music students (n = 144) and was designed as an attempt to replicate and extend previous studies. The goals were (a) to differentiate those behaviors in undergraduate music students, and (b) to examine the influences of gender and instrument played. Participants completed the health-promoting lifestyle inventory (HPLP-II), the self-efficacy (SES) and the self-regulation (SRS), scales, as well as the positive and negative affect (PANAS) scale. Results show overall deficiencies in music students’ healthy habits, which is in line with previous studies. Generally, low values were found for health responsibility, physical activity, stress management and nutrition. Female students, however, achieved significantly better results for nutrition choices. Keyboard players were found to be the weakest group in health-promoting behaviors. Significant correlations were found between the subscales of the HPLP-II, self-efficacy (SES), self-regulation (SRS) and emotional state (PANAS). These results similar to other studies, moreover, support the assumption that music students’ healthy behaviors generalize across different socio-cultural contexts.

Familiarity of Western melodies: An exploratory approach to influences of national culture, genre and musical expertise

It is unknown to what extent listeners in different Western countries share long-term representations of melodies as well as their genre associations, and whether such knowledge is modulated through music training. A group of German listeners (N = 40) rated their familiarity with 144 melody excerpts from different genres implicitly (melody structure) and explicitly (melody title). Melodies were identical to those used in a previous Franco-Canadian study (Peretz, Babaï, Lussier, Hébert, & Gagnon, 1995). In addition, melodies were attributed by the participants to predefined genre categories, and similarities between pairs of melodies were computed, using an algorithm by Müllensiefen and Frieler (2006). Results revealed patterns of (un)familiarity, which, in part, deviated from the previous study. Melodies from classical, ceremonial, and – to a lesser extent – children’s songs categories were rated as most familiar, whereas traditional and more recent francophone tunes from mixed categories were judged as unfamiliar. Music training had no significant influence on implicit memory for melodies but rather on explicit knowledge of their titles. Computational analyses suggest that highly familiar and highly unfamiliar tunes share structural features with melodies belonging to the same category, whereas dissimilarities were detected between certain clusters of genre categories. Taken together, these results suggest that long-term representation of melodies is influenced by a listener’s (Western) national background. Representations are differently affected by specific genres but only partially influenced by music training and by structural properties.

Long-term representations of melodies in Western listeners: Influences of familiarity, musical expertise, tempo and structure

We investigated the effects of familiarity, level of musical expertise, musical tempo, and structural boundaries on the identification of familiar and unfamiliar tunes. Healthy Western listeners (N = 62; age range 14–64 years) judged their level of familiarity with a preselected set of melodies when the number of tones of a given melody was increased from trial to trial according to the so-called gating paradigm. The number of tones served as one dependent measure. The second dependent measure was the physical duration of the stimulus presentation until listeners identified a melody as familiar or unfamiliar. Results corroborate previous work, suggesting that listeners need less information to recognize familiar as compared to unfamiliar melodies. Both decreasing and increasing the original tempo by a factor of two delayed the identification of familiar melodies. Furthermore, listeners had more difficulty identifying unfamiliar melodies when tempo was increased. Finally, musical expertise significantly influenced identification of either melodic category, i.e., reducing the required number of tones. Taken together, the findings support theories which suggest that tempo information is coded in melody representation, and that musical expertise is associated with especially efficient strategies for accessing long-term representations of melodic materials.