Laura M. Getz

The relationship between affect, uses of music, and music preferences in a sample of South African adolescents

The current study examined the relationship between individual differences in uses of music (i.e. motives for listening to music), music preferences (for different genres), and positive affect (PA) and negative affect (NA), thus linking two areas of past research into a more comprehensive model. A sample of 193 South African adolescents (ages 12–17) completed measures of the above constructs and data were analyzed via correlations and structural equation modeling (SEM). Significant correlations between affect and uses of music were tested using SEM; a model whereby PA influenced background and cognitive uses of music, NA influenced emotional use of music, and higher uses of music led to increased preferences for music styles was supported. Future research for uses of music and music preferences are discussed.

The influence of stress, optimism, and music training on music uses and preferences

In the present study we examined how different aspects of a person’s life, such as the amount of stress experienced, levels of optimism, and the amount of musical training received, were related to their motives for listening to music (for emotional regulation and/or for cognitive stimulation) and their preferences for what types of music to listen to. Participants (N = 154) completed surveys measuring stress, optimism, music uses, and music preferences. Results indicate that high stress ratings predicted the use of music for emotional regulation. Additionally, optimistic individuals also tended to use music emotionally, meaning that stress and optimism, though highly negatively correlated, appear to influence uses of music independently. People with more music training followed a different pattern; even though they had higher stress ratings and lower optimism ratings overall, individuals with music training tended to listen to music for cognitive reasons more than for emotional regulation. These findings help us further understand the variables that lead to individual differences in music uses and preferences.

Perceiving the initial note: Quantitative models of how listeners parse cyclical auditory patterns

In this paper, we explore the rules followed by the auditory system in grouping temporal patterns. Imagine the following cyclical pattern (which we call an “auditory necklace”—an for short—because those patterns are best visualized as beads arranged on a circle) consisting of notes (1s) and rests (0s): … 1110011011100110 …. It is perceived either as repeating 11100110 or as repeating 11011100. We devised a method to explore the temporal segmentation of ans. In two experiments, while an an was played, a circular array of icons appeared on the screen. At the time of each event (i.e., note or rest), one icon was highlighted; the highlight moved cyclically around the circular array. The participants were asked to click on the icon that corresponded to the note they perceived as the starting point, or clasp, of the an. The best account of the segmentation of our ans is based on Garner’s (1974) run and gap principles. An important feature of our probabilistic model is the way in which it combines the effects of run length and gap length: additively. This result is an auditory analogue of Kubovy and van den Berg’s (2008) discovery of the additivity of the effects of two visual grouping principles (proximity and similarity) conjointly applied to the same stimulus.

The manifestation of stress and rumination in musicians

ABSTRACT Here we offer a brief review of research on individual differences that are common to musicians, focusing on our own work on rumination and stress. Rumination and stress have been linked with depression and negative health outcomes. We discuss two of our published studies and two new, unpublished replications that find elevated levels of rumination and stress in musicians. Further, we review literature that finds this combination of rumination and stress might be especially toxic. Even though people frequently use music to help combat stress, musicians may not be taking advantage of their frequent exposure to music, further exacerbating the problem. Interventions aimed at alleviating stress and rumination might prove helpful to musicians.

Competition between rhythmic and linguistic organization in a sentence-rhythm Stroop task

We provide a test of Patels [(2003). Language, music, syntax and the brain. Nature Neuroscience, 6, 674–681] shared syntactic integration resources hypothesis by investigating the competition between determinants of rhythmic parsing and linguistic parsing using a sentence-rhythm Stroop task. We played five-note rhythm patterns in which each note is replaced with a spoken word of a five-word sentence and asked participants to indicate the starting point of the rhythm while they disregarded which word would normally be heard as the first word of the sentence. In Study 1, listeners completed the task in their native language. In Study 2, we investigated whether this competition is weakened if the sentences were in a listeners non-native language. In Study 3, we investigated how much language mastery is necessary to obtain the effects seen in Studies 1 and 2. We demonstrate that processing resources for rhythmic parsing and linguistic parsing overlap with one another, particularly when the task is demanding. We also show that the tendency for language to bias processing does not require deep knowledge of the language.

Competition between Rhythmic and Linguistic Meaning Revisited: The Effect of Task Demands:

This paper revisits the conclusion of our previous work regarding the dominance of meaning in the competition between rhythmic parsing and linguistic parsing. We played five-note rhythm patterns in which each sound is a spoken word of a five-word sentence. We asked listeners to indicate the starting point of the rhythm while disregarding which word would normally be heard as the first word of the sentence. In four studies, we varied task demands by introducing differences in rhythm complexity, rhythm ambiguity, rhythm pairing, and semantic coherence. We found that task complexity affects the dominance of meaning. We therefore amend our previous conclusion: when processing resources are taxed, listeners do not always primarily attend to meaning; instead, they primarily attend to the aspect of the pattern (rhythm or meaning) that is more salient.

Can a pitch be “sharp,” “bright,” “large,” “narrow,” and “high?” Questioning the automaticity of audiovisual correspondences

Previous research has found that there is an inherent association between auditory and visual dimensions such as the height a pitch and the size of an object. From this, researchers have assumed that such audiovisual correspondences must result solely from bottom-up processing. In a series of studies, we sought to separate bottom-up and top-down effects in the correspondence between pitch and visual size, elevation, spatial frequency, brightness, and sharpness. Using a modified speeded classification task, we asked participants to pair audiovisual dimensions in “compatible” (e.g., high pitch/small circle) and “incompatible” (e.g., high pitch/large circle) conditions. We compared their reaction times across conditions and found that in most cases participants can pair the dimensions in either direction with similar speed and accuracy. We conclude that top-down effects such as task instructions and language knowledge do influence the strength of audiovisual associations. We thus strongly question the assump...

The specificity of expertise: For whom is the clave pattern the “key” to salsa music? ☆

Each Latin salsa music style is associated with a characteristic clave pattern that constitutes an essential structure for performers. In this article we asked what types of expertise are needed to detect the correct salsa-clave pairing. Using two clave patterns (the 3-2 and 2-3 son clave) and three manipulated alternatives, we asked listeners to choose the correct clave pattern for a variety of bomba, calypso, mambo and merengue excerpts. The results of Studies 1 and 2 show that listeners unfamiliar with salsa were unable to detect the correct salsa-clave pairing. Listeners who had some music training or were familiar with salsa detected the need for syncopation but not the specific pairing. Only musicians well-acquainted with salsa correctly detected the salsa-clave pairing. Studies 3 and 4 showed that incorrect choices were not due to an inability to distinguish between the alternatives: both adults and five-year-olds could easily tell apart the various patterns we used. We conclude that the distinction between the 2-3 and 3-2 claves is not inherent in the music itself, but rather is a convention to be learned through exposure and training. We discuss the results using an analogy to language learning.