Psychology of Music

This paper presents an investigation of age and friendship effects on the processes and outcomes of children's musical collaborations. Previous research in this area (Miell and MacDonald, 2000) has highlighted that when children work together with a friend they produce compositions that are rated as being better quality than compositions produced by children who do not work with a friend. In addition, children working with a friend have been shown to communicate (both verbally and musically) in a style that is more conducive to good quality collaboration. In the present study, girls worked together on a keyboard composition, and pairs of different ages were compared since the effect that age might have on children's compositions is currently a topical issue (Barrett, 1998). All verbal and musical communication was coded in line with criteria developed and validated previously. The younger girls who worked with a friend produced compositions that were rated as being of a better quality than the compositions produced by those of the same age who did not work with a friend. In addition, the musical and verbal interactions of these friendship pairs were seen as being more characteristic of good quality collaboration. This effect was not found for the older pairs, and possible reasons for this pattern of findings are discussed.

Research reports of consistent gender differences in the selection of musical instruments (i.e. trumpets for boys and flutes for girls). As observed in other domains, social perception research shows comparably negative evaluations of individuals engaged in activities atypical to their gender. The present study investigated college students' evaluations of fictitious male or female musicians playing either a masculine (drum and tuba) or feminine (flute or harp) instrument. Using a semantic differential scale, the 98 students were asked their impressions of each of the four fictitious musicians according to masculine (dominant, leadership, activity), feminine (warm, sensitive, caring), or gender-neutral (adjustment, happiness, success) descriptors. Results showed that female musicians were perceived as more dominant, active, and better leaders than male musicians. Moreover, musicians of feminine instruments were perceived as more caring, warm, sensitive, and better adjusted; but less dominant and prone to leadership than musicians of masculine instruments. Finally, the hypothesised interaction between instrument gender and musician sex was significant. Specifically, males and females were judged equivalently for masculine instruments, but males playing feminine instruments were perceived as less dominant, active, and better leaders than females playing the same instruments. Implications for gender stereotypes and social role theory are discussed, and directions for future research are outlined.

This study explored the effects of singing on the mood of singers. Participants, a community sample of volunteers, were randomly assigned to either a singing (experimental) or a listening to singing (control) group. The singers participated in a half-hour session of singing while the listeners sat and listened to the singing group. The Profile of Mood States Questionnaire (P.O.M.S.) was administered immediately before and after the singing session and again one week later. Multivariate analyses of variance (MANOVA) (3 x 2 factorial with three levels of time and two levels of group) were conducted on each of the P.O.M.S. subscales. Multivariate F tests indicated that significant changes occurred on the P.O.M.S. sub-scales (tension, anger, fatigue, vigour and confusion) for both the singing and listening groups over time. There was no significant group-time interactions indicating that both groups responded in a similar fashion to the singing session, although the effects for singing were more robust. The results of this study indicate that both singing and listening to singing can alter mood immediately after participation in a short singing session, and that some of these effects were evident in the P.O.M.S. scores one week later. These results suggest that a longer and more vigorous singing session is needed to obtain additional benefits of singing over listening.

This paper examines the social and musical co-ordination between members of a student string quartet in rehearsal and performance. Devised as an exploratory observation and interview study, a two-tier analysis of the data is undertaken. The first deals with broadly socio-cultural issues, the second with moment-by-moment social and musical co-ordination. The results indicate that there are many factors that influence the functioning of such an ensemble. These include personal concerns about particular social dynamics within the group, performance anxiety worries, as well as immediate musical demands relating to the co-ordination of content and process. The paper concludes with a discussion of ways in which further studies of social and musical co-ordination might be developed. In particular, emphasis is given to the need for the development of a comprehensive theoretical framework reflecting a more adequate conception of music ontology and encapsulating the mutuality of the multi-tier social and musical factors.

In a tone language, pitch variations are used to contrast word meaning. For example, the Cantonese syllable /si/ means "teacher" when spoken in a high pitch and "yes" when spoken in a low pitch. How is fundamental frequency (Fo) used to signal lexical tones that occur in songs? In an examination of Cantonese songs, it was found that songwriters abandon the ratio scale of Fo differences that is applied to lexical tones in carefully read speech and instead use an ordinal scale. For example, a high tone that is normally 12% higher than a mid-tone in speech can be realised as any higher Fo (but never a lower Fo) in songs. A perceptual experiment showed that native Cantonese-speaking listeners similarly apply an ordinal Fo scale to arrive at the lexical meaning of the lyric. This ratio-to-ordinal mapping in Cantonese songs ensures the musicality of the melody while preserving adequate identifiability of lexical tones in the lyric.

Several experiments have shown that on-hold telephone music affects the estimation of projected time before hang-up. However, the cognitive mechanisms of this effect have not been investigated, although a separate series of studies have shown that music affects time perception. Therefore an experiment was carried out in which subjects had to wait on the telephone, with the on-hold message accompanied or not by music. Results show that compared with the control condition without music, the presence of music leads to: (1) an underestimation of time spent and (2) an over-estimation of projected time passed to hang-up.