Expectation and Attention
Expectation and Attention
The influence of emotions on expectation and attention in music perception.
Ongoing experiment: If you are interested in participating in ongoing research e-mail or sign up using timedriver: https://my.timedriver.com/5XGBH.
People involved: Dr Eduardo Coutinho and Dr Harriet Crook were employed as part-time research assistants. Marianna Philippou wrote her BA dissertation about a related topic. Yuko Morimoto has assisted with the stream segregation experiment. 2010-2011 MA in Psychology of Music students ran one of the experiments on musical expectation. Music Perception students ran an early pilot experiment.
Funding: Small Research Grant of the British Academy Dec 2009 – Feb 2011
Emotion elicited expectations
Timmers, R. (2009) Emotion elicited expectations. Presented at ESCOM2009, August 12-16, Jyvaskyla, Finland.
Background The role of emotions in the context of music listening has mainly been formulated in terms of responses to music. Listeners experience an emotional response to music or perceive that music is expressive of an emotion. However, it may be expected that the role of emotions is not limited to an "after-listening response", but that emotions play a role in shaping music perception and cognition. In particular, experienced emotions may influence expectations for the continuation of music. Aims The aim of this study is to demonstrate that perceived emotions influence musical expectations. Methods Musical stimuli are constructed that consist of two halves. Each beginning is combined with two second halves that differ only along one dimension. For example, continuations differ either in register, mode, interval size, or rhythm, but are identical in every other respect. In a listening experiment, participants are first familiarized with every combination of beginning and continuation, to ensure that all continuations are equally expected. Next, the same stimuli are presented to the participants, except that they are performed either "sadly", "happily" or mechanically as in the familiarization phase. Additionally, the first tone of the second half is tuned correctly or out of tune. The task of the participants is to judge the tuning of this tone. Reaction time and percentage of correct responses are measured. Results The measures of reaction time and percentage of correct responses are used to assess the expectedness of the continuation. Reaction times should be slower and correct responses lower for unexpected continuations. The prediction is that the expectedness of a continuation depends on the mood of the performance: e.g. if a musical stimulus is performed sadly, the continuation with a sad connotation is more expected, while if the stimulus is performed happily, the happy continuation is more expected. Both continuations are equally expected when the music is performed mechanically. Conclusion The contribution of this study is to initiate the investigation of the influence of emotional responses to music on subsequent perception of music, starting with a demonstration of the influence of perceived emotions on musical expectations.
Other presentations:
Timmers, R. Emotion-elicited expectation. Eminent Speakers Series, Goldsmiths University of London. 3 Nov 2009.
Timmers, R. Influences of emotion on expectation and attention in music perception, Research Seminar, University of Huddersfield. 21 April 2010.
Timmers, R. Influences of emotion on expectation and attention in music perception, Yorkshire Music and Science Colloquium 2010, “The Power of Music”, University of York. 4-5 May 2010.
Crook, H. Auditory Illusions and music listening: Investigating emotion, expectation & attention in music listening. Department of Medical Physics & Clinical Engineering, Royal Hallamshire Hospital, Sheffield. 21 Feb 2011.
Forthcoming journal article: Timmers, R. & Crook, H. Affective Priming in Music Listening: Emotions as a Source of Musical Expectation.
Attention to auditory streams
Timmers, R., Crook, H., & Morimoto, Y. Emotional influences on attention to auditory streams. Poster Presentation at The Neurosciences and Music IV: Learning and Memory. 9-12 June 2011, Edinburgh.
We mostly conceptualise emotions as a consequence of music listening. However, emotional responses may also contribute to our perception and cognition of music. Building on a previous experiment that tested the effect of emotional priming on musical expectations, we tested whether induced emotions influence attention to sequences consisting of multiple streams. We predicted for example that a happy association would direct attention towards higher pitch registers and faster sequences.
Participants saw happy, sad, or neutral pictures, while listening to sequences that could be heard as consisting of one or two streams. Participants indicated how they perceived the sequences and what line they perceived to be perceptually most salient. Sequences were presented in three tempi and with two pitch intervals.
Results showed a significant effect of emotion on the second rating in the expected direction. However, no significant effect of emotion was found for the first ratings of stream integration or separation, which were only significantly influenced by tempo and pitch interval size. A second experiment is underway with the same objectives that uses a stronger mood induction procedure and online measures of attention to and perception of auditory streams. It will verify whether induced emotions indeed influence attention to auditory streams and even influence such basic processes as the grouping of auditory events.
Other presentations:
Timmers, R. & Crook, H. Influences of perceived emotions on perception of musical streams. Poster Presentation at the Conference on Interdisciplinary Musicology 2010 (CIM10): Nature versus Culture. 23-24 July 2010, Sheffield.
Forthcoming journal article: Timmers, R. Crook, H.L., & Morimoto, Y. Changing the way you hear: influences of emotions on perception of auditory streams.