Empirical Musicology Review: Volume 4, Number 1 (2009)

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https://kb.osu.edu/handle/1811/36265

Empirical Musicology Review Vol. 4, No. 1, 2009

Issue DOI: https://doi.org/10.18061/1811/36265

Editor's Note
Thompson, Bill p. 1
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Western Classical Music in the Minor Mode Is Slower (Except in the Romantic Period)
Post, Olaf; Huron, David pp. 2-10
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Why Does Music Therapy Help in Autism?
Khetrapal, Neha pp. 11-18
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A Simpler Explanation for Vestibular Influence on Beat Perception: No Specialized Unit Needed
Riggle, Mark pp. 19-22
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Mode and Tempo in Western Classical Music of the Common- Practice Era: My Grandmother Was Largely Right – but No One Knows Why
Konečni, Vladimir J. pp. 23-26
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Commentary on "Why Does Music Therapy Help in Autism?" by N. Khetrapal
Bhatara, Anjali K. pp. 27-31
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Extracting the Beat: An Experience-dependent Complex Integration of Multisensory Information Involving Multiple Levels of the Nervous System
Trainor, Laurel J.; Unrau, Andrea pp. 32-36
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General Intelligence and Modality-specific Differences in Performance: A Response to Schellenberg (2008)
Tierney, Adam T.; Bergeson, Tonya R.; Pisoni, David B. pp. 37-39
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Announcements
Thompson, Bill pp. 40-43
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Journal home page: http://emusicology.org

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Announcements
(Empirical Musicology Review, 2009-01) Thompson, Bill
General Intelligence and Modality-specific Differences in Performance: A Response to Schellenberg (2008)
(Empirical Musicology Review, 2009-01) Tierney, Adam T.; Bergeson, Tonya R.; Pisoni, David B.
Tierney et al. (2008) reported that musicians performed better on an auditory sequence memory task when compared to non-musicians, but the two groups did not differ in performance on a sequential visuo-spatial memory task. Schellenberg (2008) claims that these results can be attributed entirely to differences in IQ. This explanation, however, cannot account for the fact that the musicians’ advantage was modality-specific.
Extracting the Beat: An Experience-dependent Complex Integration of Multisensory Information Involving Multiple Levels of the Nervous System
(Empirical Musicology Review, 2009-01) Trainor, Laurel J.; Unrau, Andrea
In a series of studies we have shown that movement (or vestibular stimulation) that is synchronized to every second or every third beat of a metrically ambiguous rhythm pattern biases people to perceive the meter as a march or as a waltz, respectively. Riggle (this volume) claims that we postulate an "innate", "specialized brain unit" for beat perception that is "directly" influenced by vestibular input. In fact, to the contrary, we argue that experience likely plays a large role in the development of rhythmic auditory-movement interactions, and that rhythmic processing in the brain is widely distributed and includes subcortical and cortical areas involved in sound processing and movement. Further, we argue that vestibular and auditory information are integrated at various subcortical and cortical levels along with input from other sensory modalities, and it is not clear which levels are most important for rhythm processing or, indeed, what a "direct" influence of vestibular input would mean. Finally, we argue that vestibular input to sound location mechanisms may be involved, but likely cannot explain the influence of vestibular input on the perception of auditory rhythm. This remains an empirical question for future research.
Commentary on "Why Does Music Therapy Help in Autism?" by N. Khetrapal
(Empirical Musicology Review, 2009-01) Bhatara, Anjali K.
Khetrapal reviews the literature on music and autism and stresses the need for a greater focus on the cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying both autism and music perception. I build upon this review and discuss the strong connections between speech prosody and emotion in music. These connections imply that emotion recognition training in one domain can influence emotion recognition in the other. Understanding of emotional speech is frequently impaired in individuals with ASD, so music therapy should be explored further as a possible treatment.
Mode and Tempo in Western Classical Music of the Common- Practice Era: My Grandmother Was Largely Right – but No One Knows Why
(Empirical Musicology Review, 2009-01) Konečni, Vladimir J.
The work of Post and Huron (2009) is an example of how the received wisdom in musicology can be fruitfully challenged by simple empirical procedures – in this case demonstrating a counterintuitive, yet strong, relationship between the minor mode and fast tempi in the Romantic era. The fact that the authors’ explanation in terms of the emotional similarities of the minor mode with the Sturm und Drang attributes (other than “sadness”) is not wholly convincing in music-historical terms does not diminish the importance of the finding. However, there is still no resolution of the central psychological conundrum of why the minor mode is generally associated with “sadness.” And it is unclear why the authors drew on speech prosody rather than human emotion-driven and emotion-expressing movement for their tempo observations. There are other aspects of the data that require further exploration. One is the differential distribution of the associations of various tempo markings with mode across the periods of the common-practice era. Another is the 3 : 1 preponderance of allegro over adagio in the authors’ search of 50,000 tracks in the ClassicsOnline.com database and the possibility that this ratio is a partial consequence of the psychological implications of the sonata form that were intuitively understood and used by composers.
A Simpler Explanation for Vestibular Influence on Beat Perception: No Specialized Unit Needed
(Empirical Musicology Review, 2009-01) Riggle, Mark
Some researchers have hypothesized the existence of a specialized brain unit for beat perception in music which is directly influenced by vestibular stimulation arising from motion. They also suggest that the unit is involved in the entrainment of movement to music. However, the data used to support this hypothesis may be explained by a simpler phenomenon: the audiogravic and audiogyral effect. This effect is not related to beat perception at all but deals with perceived sound changes under accelerations. If the perception of a sound changes as a consequence of acceleration of the vestibular system, and those accelerations are timed to coincide with particular beats in a stream of unaccented beats, then those beats will actually sound different. The detection of a given meter in that unaccented stream will therefore arise from this change in sound processing, with no need for a specialized brain mechanism for beat perception. There is no direct evidence supporting the existence of an innate brain unit.
Why Does Music Therapy Help in Autism?
(Empirical Musicology Review, 2009-01) Khetrapal, Neha
Music therapy is shown to be an effective intervention for emotional recognition deficits in autism. However, researchers to date have yet to propose a model that accounts for the neurobiological and cognitive components that are responsible for such improvements. The current paper outlines a model whereby the encoding of tonal pitch is proposed as the underlying mechanism. Accurate tonal pitch perception is important for recognizing emotions like happiness and sadness in the auditory domain. Once acquired, the ability to perceive tonal pitch functions as a domain-specific module that proves beneficial for music cognition. There is biological preparedness for the development of such a module and it is hypothesized to be preserved in autism. The current paper reinforces the need to build intervention programs based on this preserved module in autism, and proposes that this module may form the basis for a range of benefits related to music therapy. Possible brain areas associated with this module are suggested.
Western Classical Music in the Minor Mode Is Slower (Except in the Romantic Period)
(Empirical Musicology Review, 2009-01) Post, Olaf; Huron, David
Two studies are reported that examine the relationship between musical mode and tempo in Western classical music. In the first study, modes were determined for 331 works bearing the tempo markings largo, adagio, allegro, or presto. Slower tempo markings are significantly more likely to be associated with the minor mode in the case of music from the Baroque and Classical periods, whereas the reverse trend is observed in music from the Romantic period. In the second study, an analysis of 21 audio recordings of theme-and-variation keyboard movements (from all three style periods) shows that variations written in the minor mode are performed more slowly than neighboring variations in the major mode. These tempo-related observations are largely consistent with research in speech prosody, which has shown that sad speakers speak relatively slowly.
Editor's Note
(Empirical Musicology Review, 2009-01) Thompson, Bill

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