Empirical Musicology Review: Volume 3, Number 4 (2008)

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Empirical Musicology Review Vol. 3, No. 4, 2008

Issue DOI: https://doi.org/10.18061/1811/81086

Editor's note
Thompson, Bill p. 177
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Effects of Early Musical Experience on Auditory Sequence Memory
Tierney, Adam T.; Bergeson, Tonya R.; Pisoni, David B. pp. 178-186
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Perception and production of linguistic and musical rhythm by Korean and English middle school students
Slobodian, Lydia N. pp. 187-204
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Commentary on "Effects of Early Musical Experience on Auditory Sequence Memory" by Adam Tierney, Tonya Bergeson-Dana, and David Pisoni
Schellenberg, E. Glenn pp. 205-207
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Review of "Perception and production of linguistic and musical rhythm by Korean and English middle school students" by Lydia N. Slobodian
Iversen, John R. pp. 208-214
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Commentary on "Comparison of Word Intelligibility in Spoken and Sung Phrases" by Lauren Collister and David Huron
Sundberg, Johan; Ternström, Sten pp. 215-217
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Review of Aniruddh D. Patel, Music, Language and the Brain
Demorest, Steven M. pp. 218-222
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Announcements
Thompson, Bill pp. 223-224
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    Announcements
    (Empirical Musicology Review, 2008-10) Thompson, Bill
  • Item
    Editor's note
    (Empirical Musicology Review, 2008-10) Thompson, Bill
  • Item
    Review of Aniruddh D. Patel, Music, Language and the Brain
    (Empirical Musicology Review, 2008-10) Demorest, Steven M.
  • Item
    Commentary on "Comparison of Word Intelligibility in Spoken and Sung Phrases" by Lauren Collister and David Huron
    (Empirical Musicology Review, 2008-10) Sundberg, Johan; Ternström, Sten
    We note that the intelligibility of vowels is reduced at high pitches, and propose that decreased decoding of vowels may partially account for the reported findings. Analysis of performance as a function of pitch is recommended. We surmise that reverberation associated with the large microphone distance might have generated reverberation that interfered disproportionately with identification of consonants in sung stimuli, which usually have greater sound intensity than spoken stimuli. Finally, we note the potential relevance of vibrato for speech intelligibility.
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    Review of "Perception and production of linguistic and musical rhythm by Korean and English middle school students" by Lydia N. Slobodian
    (Empirical Musicology Review, 2008-10) Iversen, John R.
    Interest in possible cultural influences on basic rhythm perception and production has been growing, and the paper by Slobodian (2008) fits squarely in this trend, studying rhythm perception and production in a large number English and Korean native speakers. The findings were interpreted in terms of cross-cultural similarity, suggesting that preferences, e.g. for binary meter, are broadly shared across cultures. As is commonly encountered in cross-cultural research, however, there were several difficulties in offering a clear interpretation of the results, such as the large extent of Western music enculturation of the Korean participants. This commentary will review Slobodian’s findings, offering an alternative interpretation of one result, suggesting there may be a cultural difference in meter perception. It will also review other relevant research and integrate lessons learned from a recent study of rhythm perception in Korean, American and Japanese listeners. Throughout, it aims to offer suggestions of how to improve the chances of reaching the ultimate goal of understanding what aspect of culture shapes rhythm perception and production, and the mechanisms by which they do so.
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    Commentary on "Effects of Early Musical Experience on Auditory Sequence Memory" by Adam Tierney, Tonya Bergeson-Dana, and David Pisoni
    (Empirical Musicology Review, 2008-10) Schellenberg, E. Glenn
    Tierney, Bergeson-Dana, and Pisoni (2008) conclude that their results “provide additional converging evidence that early musical experience and activity-dependent learning may selectively affect verbal rehearsal processes and the allocation of attention in sequence memory tasks”. Closer inspection of their methods and results, the methods and results of previous studies that reported similar findings and the literature as a whole makes it clear that these conclusions are unfounded.
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    Perception and production of linguistic and musical rhythm by Korean and English middle school students
    (Empirical Musicology Review, 2008-10) Slobodian, Lydia N.
    I examine rhythmic tendencies of Korean and Western middle school students in linguistic and abstract musical contexts using a series of speaking and clapping experiments. Results indicate a preference in both groups for beat subdivisions in small integer ratios and simple binary metric interpretations. These preferences are consistently more exaggerated in native English speaking students than in Korean students. Tempo was a significant factor in all tasks.
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    Effects of Early Musical Experience on Auditory Sequence Memory
    (Empirical Musicology Review, 2008-10) Tierney, Adam T.; Bergeson, Tonya R.; Pisoni, David B.
    The present study investigated a possible link between musical training and immediate memory span by testing experienced musicians and three groups of musically inexperienced subjects (gymnasts, Psychology 101 students, and video game players) on sequence memory and word familiarity tasks. By including skilled gymnasts who began studying their craft by age six, video game players, and Psychology 101 students as comparison groups, we attempted to control for some of the ways skilled musicians may differ from participants drawn from the general population in terms of gross motor skills and intensive experience in a highly skilled domain from an early age. We found that musicians displayed longer immediate memory spans than the comparison groups on auditory presentation conditions of the sequence reproductive span task. No differences were observed between the four groups on the visual conditions of the sequence memory task. These results provide additional converging support to recent findings showing that early musical experience and activity-dependent learning may selectively affect verbal rehearsal processes and the allocation of attention in sequence memory tasks.