Our research spans the science of music, auditory research, and technology (SMART). We are interested in the perception of music, emotional speech, and soundscapes. We are also investigating the use of music to rehabilitate various communication disorders and the development of novel technologies to support the perception of music.

Despite the vast differences that exist in music across style and culture, certain similarities exist. Melody is one area where cross-cultural similarity can be found. There are patterns of melodic motion (i.e., how a melody proceeds from note to note) that appear to transcend many musical styles. Music theorist Eugene Narmour (1990) has forwarded a set of principles that describe these common melodic patterns. We submit that the origin of the principles and by extension the common melodic patterns may be vocal constraint.

The components of music shed light on important aspects of hearing perception.

To make music, musicians must be able to produce and keep track of subtle changes that occur along numerous dimensions of sound, often unfolding in parallel over time. To understand music, listeners must be able to perceive and make sense of these subtle changes.

Exploration of domains related to the emotional experiences of the patient and family will act to sensitize our clientele to the topic of emotion, and possibly address underlying motivations for their visit. At a minimum, the evidence suggests that conversations about the emotional impact of hearing loss will provide a better understanding of the patient’s and family’s disability experience, foster a stronger therapeutic alliance, and likely lead to more positive practice outcomes, such as greater treatment adherence, more open and honest communication with patients, and greater patient satisfaction.

This study assessed methods of increasing the effectiveness of train horns without increasing intensity. Special attention was paid to the problem of masking by car noise. In Experiment 1, the audibility of pure tones presented in car noise was assessed across a broad range of frequencies. In Experiment 2, the urgency of pure tones presented in car noise was assessed across a broad range of frequencies. In Experiment 3, urgency of novel train horns was assessed in quiet. Novel train horns varied with regard to spectral centroid and musical dissonance but not intensity. Findings suggested that train horns could be made more effective by ensuring substantial mid-frequency energy, shifting the spectral centroid higher, and increasing musical dissonance.

This paper deals with one aspect of a study undertaken for Transport Canada as a component of the joint government and industry funded Direction 2006 Highway-Railway Grade Crossing Research Program. The study’s objective was to provide recommendations to ensure adequate warning for safety reasons and to address excessive loudness complaints from crews and from residents near tracks. This paper describes the field measurements and analyses undertaken to assess the influence of horn position on its effectiveness at operating speeds and summarizes the findings with respect to signal detection and alerting qualities of different horns.

Listening effort is a long-standing area of interest in auditory cognitive neuroscience. Prior research has used multiple techniques to shed light on the neurophysiological mechanisms underlying listening during challenging conditions. Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) is growing in popularity as a tool for cognitive neuroscience research, and its recent advances offer many potential advantages over other neuroimaging modalities for research related to listening effort. This review introduces the basic science of fNIRS and its uses for auditory cognitive neuroscience. We also discuss its application in recently published studies on listening effort and consider future opportunities for studying effortful listening with fNIRS. After reading this article, the learner will know how fNIRS works and summarize its uses for listening effort research. The learner will also be able to apply this knowledge toward generation of future research in this area.

Interindividual differences in music-related reward have been characterized as involving five main facets: musical seeking, emotion evocation, mood regulation, social reward, and sensory-motor. An interesting concept related to how humans decode music as a rewarding experience is music transcendence or absorption (i.e., music-driven states of complete immersion, including momentary loss of self-consciousness or even time-space disorientation). Here, we investigated the relation between previously characterized facets of music reward and individual differences in music absorption. A first sample of participants (N = 370) completed both the Barcelona Music Reward Questionnaire (BMRQ) and the Absorption in Music Scale (AIMS). Results showed that both constructs were highly interrelated (r = 0.78, p < 0.001), indicating that higher music reward sensitivity is associated with a greater tendency to music-related absorption states. In addition, four items from the AIMS were identified as suitable to be added to an extended version of the BMRQ (eBMRQ). A second sample (N = 550) completed the eBMRQ for a validation study. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses on the whole sample (N = 920) showed the reliable psychometric properties of the eBMRQ and suggested that taking into account an absorption facet could contribute to a better characterization of individual differences in the sensitivity to experience music-related reward and pleasure.

We describe our implementation of two neural networks: a static feedforward network, and an Elman network, for predicting mean valence/arousal ratings of participants for musical excerpts based on audio features. Thirteen audio features were extracted from 12 classical music excerpts (3 from each emotion quadrant). Valence/arousal ratings were collected from 45 participants for the static network, and 9 participants for the Elman network. For the Elman network, each excerpt was temporally segmented into four, sequential chunks of equal duration. Networks were trained on eight of the 12 excerpts and tested on the remaining four. The static network predicted values that closely matched mean participant ratings of valence and arousal. The Elman network did a good job of predicting the arousal trend but not the valence trend. Our study indicates that neural networks can be trained to identify statistical consistencies across audio features to predict valence/arousal values.

The Routledge Companion to Interdisciplinary Studies in Singing, Volume I: Development introduces the many voices necessary to better understand the act of singing—a complex human behaviour that emerges without deliberate training. Presenting research from the social sciences and humanities alongside that of the natural sciences and medicine alike, this companion explores the relationship between hearing sensitivity and vocal production, in turn identifying how singing is integrated with sensory and cognitive systems while investigating the ways we test and measure singing ability and development. Contributors consider the development of singing within the context of the entire lifespan, focusing on its cognitive, social, and emotional significance in four parts:

• Musical, historical and scientific foundations
• Perception and production
• Multimodality
• Assessment

In 2009, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada funded a seven-year major collaborative research initiative known as Advancing Interdisciplinary Research in Singing (AIRS). Together, global researchers from a broad range of disciplines addressed three challenging questions: How does singing develop in every human being? How should singing be taught and used to teach? How does singing impact wellbeing? Across three volumes, The Routledge Companion to Interdisciplinary Studies in Singing consolidates the findings of each of these three questions, defining the current state of theory and research in the field. Volume I: Development tackles the first of these three questions, tracking development from infancy through childhood to adult years.

There are two positions in the classic debate regarding musical emotion: the cognitivist position and the emotivist position. According to the cognitivist position, music expresses emotion but does not induce it in listeners. So, listeners may recognize emotion in music without feeling it, unlike real, everyday emotion. According to the emotivist position, listeners not only recognize emotion but also feel it. This is supported by their physiological responses during music listening, which are similar to responses occurring with real emotion. When listeners provide emotion appraisals, if the cognitivist position were true, then these appraisals might be based on audio features in the music. However, if the emotivist position were true, then appraisals would be based on the emotion experienced by listeners as opposed to what they perceived in the audio features. We propose a hypothesis combining both positions according to which, listeners make emotion appraisals based on a combination of what they perceive in the music as well as what they experience during the listening process. In this paper, we explore all three positions using connectionist prediction models, specifically four different neural networks: (a) using only audio features as input, (b) using only physiological features as input, (c) using both audio and physiological features as input, and (d) using a committee machine that combines contributions from an audio network and a physiology network. We examine the performance of these networks and discuss their implications as possible cognitive models of emotion appraisal within listeners.

Introduction:

This study is a follow-up to prior research from our group that attempts to relate noise exposure and hearing thresholds in active performing musicians of the National Ballet of Canada Orchestra.

Materials and Methods:

Exposures obtained in early 2010 were compared to exposures obtained in early 2017 (the present study). In addition, audiometric thresholds obtained in early 2012 were compared to thresholds obtained in early 2017 (the present study). This collection of measurements presents an opportunity to observe the regularities in the patterns of exposure as well as threshold changes that may be expected in active orchestra musicians over a 5-year span.

Results:

The pattern of noise exposure across instrument groups, which was consistent over the two time points, reveals highest exposures among brass, percussion/basses, and woodwinds. However, the average noise exposure across groups and time was consistently below 85 dBA, which suggests no occupational hazard. These observations were corroborated by audiometric thresholds, which were generally (a) in the normal range and (b) unchanged in the 5-year period between measurements.

Conclusion:

Because exposure levels were consistently below 85 dBA and changes in audiometric thresholds were minimal, we conclude that musicians experienced little-to-no risk of noise-induced hearing loss.

We examined whether facial expressions of performers influence the emotional connotations of sung materials, and whether attention is implicated in audio-visual integration of affective cues. In Experiment 1, participants judged the emotional valence of audio-visual presentations of sung intervals. Performances were edited such that auditory and visual information conveyed congruent or incongruent affective connotations. In the single-task condition, participants judged the emotional connotation of sung intervals. In the dual-task condition, participants judged the emotional connotation of intervals while performing a secondary task. Judgements were influenced by melodic cues and facial expressions and the effects were undiminished by the secondary task. Experiment 2 involved identical conditions but participants were instructed to base judgements on auditory information alone. Again, facial expressions influenced judgements and the effect was undiminished by the secondary task. The results suggest that visual aspects of music performance are automatically and preattentively registered and integrated with auditory cues.

An empirically validated behavioral measure was used to assess whether urban soundscapes have an influence on visual attention. 68 undergraduate students at Ryerson University were recruited for participation. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three exposure conditions, concurrent, prolonged, and brief. Participants in the concurrent condition heard the soundscapes continuously, making a visual judgment while the soundscape played. For each participant, a local bias estimate was determined for each soundscape by subtracting global from local reaction time (RT). Local bias estimates were subjected to a 3-way analysis of variance. A main effect of soundscape is found, which suggests that the influence of the soundscapes assessed is variable. local bias estimates are found to be significantly correlated with subjective variables.

Many theorists have proposed that a spontaneous internal motor simulation occurs during the observation of intentional actions, and that this simulation supports action understanding. The simulation is thought to involve a coupling of sensory and motor systems along a dorsal pathway that connects visual and posterior auditory areas with inferior parietal lobule and inferior frontal gyrus. Collectively this network has been referred to as the action-observation network (“or mirror system”). This chapter introduces the Spontaneous Internal Motor Simulation of Song (SIMSS) hypothesis, which specifies the circumstances under which the observation of human song may trigger a spontaneous internal motor simulation.

Introduction: This study is a follow-up to prior research from our group that attempts to relate noise exposure and hearing thresholds in active performing musicians of the National Ballet of Canada Orchestra.

Materials and Methods: Exposures obtained in early 2010 were compared to exposures obtained in early 2017 (the present study). In addition, audiometric thresholds obtained in early 2012 were compared to thresholds obtained in early 2017 (the present study). This collection of measurements presents an opportunity to observe the regularities in the patterns of exposure as well as threshold changes that may be expected in active orchestra musicians over a 5-year span.

Results: The pattern of noise exposure across instrument groups, which was consistent over the two time points, reveals highest exposures among brass, percussion/basses, and woodwinds. However, the average noise exposure across groups and time was consistently below 85 dBA, which suggests no occupational hazard. These observations were corroborated by audiometric thresholds, which were generally (a) in the normal range and (b) unchanged in the 5-year period between measurements.

Conclusion: Because exposure levels were consistently below 85 dBA and changes in audiometric thresholds were minimal, we conclude that musicians experienced little-to-no risk of noise-induced hearing loss.

Studies show that synchronizing movements with others encourages a collective social identity, leading to increased cooperation within a group. The current study investigated whether movement synchrony impacts social categorization and cooperation across intergroup boundaries. Two 3-person groups were brought together under movement synchrony conditions designed to emphasize different social categorizations of the aggregate: all individuals moved to the same beat, each minimal group moved to a different beat, or each individual moved to a different beat. Results demonstrate that movement synchrony influenced social categorization and cooperation across intergroup boundaries. Implications for approaches to intergroup relations using movement synchrony are noted.

The present study examined the influence of infant visual cues on maternal vocal and facial expressiveness while speaking or singing and the influence of maternal visual cues on infant attention. Experiment 1 asked whether mothers exhibit more vocal emotion when speaking and singing to infants in or out of view. Adults judged which of each pair of audio excerpts (in view, out of view) sounded more emotional. Face-to-face vocalizations were judged more emotional than vocalizations to infants out of view. Moreover, mothers smiled considerably more while singing than while speaking to infants. Experiment 2 examined the influence of video feedback from infants on maternal speech and singing. Maternal vocalizations in the context of video feedback were judged to be less emotional than those in face-to-face contexts but more emotional than those in out-of-view contexts. Experiment 3 compared six-month-old infants’ attention to maternal speech and singing with audio-only versions or with silent video-only versions. Infants exhibited comparable attention to audio-only versions of speech and singing but greater attention to video-only versions of singing. The present investigation is unique in documenting the contribution of infant visual feedback to maternal vocal emotion in contexts that control for infants’ presence, visibility, and proximity.

The influence of Gestalt principles in human auditory perception is well established (Bregman, 1990). Experimental work has implicated the operation of Gestalt principles in auditory streaming and grouping within streams (e.g., Bregman, 1990; Bregman & Dannenbring, 1973; Dorman, Cutting, & Raphael, 1975; Heise & Miller, 1951; Noteboom, Brokx, & de Rooij, 1978). Gestalt-inspired principles have also been applied in a recent music-theoretic approach to the perception of melody (Narmour, 1990). Narmour's model proposes that melodic sequences engage a system of expectancies. The model further suggests that principles governing expectancies operate at several levels; specific Gestalt-like principles operate at a note-to-note level independently of cultural exposure or music training. Empirical support for these principles has been obtained for both perception (Cuddy & Lunney, 1995; Krumhansl, 1995) and production tasks (Thompson, Plaus, & Cuddy, under review). This presentation reports an investigation of the melodic patterns produced in songbirds. In particular we examine the stereotypical song of four songbird species for evidence of conformity to the Gestalt-like principles proposed to operate at a note-to-note level in humans. Analyses consider differences between production patterns formed by songbirds with rich harmonic song versus songbirds with simple harmonic song. Also addressed are the similarities and differences between birdsong and human melody.

Reconnecting Indigenous youth with their cultural traditions has been identified as an essential part of healing the intergenerational effects of forced assimilation policies. Past work suggests that learning the music of one's culture can foster cultural identity and community bonding, which may serve as protective factors for well-being. An 8-week traditional song and dance program was implemented in a school setting for Indigenous youth. An evaluation was conducted using a mixed-method design to determine the impact of the program on 35 youth in the community. A triangulation of qualitative and quantitative data revealed several important themes, including personal development, cultural development, social development, student engagement in school-based programming, and perpetuating cultural knowledge. The program provided students with an opportunity to connect with their cultural traditions through activities that encouraged self and cultural expression. Community responses suggested that this type of programming is highly valued among Indigenous communities.

Skips are relatively infrequent in diatonic melodies and are compositionally treated in systematic ways. This treatment has been attributed to deliberate compositional strategies that are also subject to certain constraints. Study 1 showed that ease of vocal production may be accommodated compositionally. Number of skips and their distribution within a melody’s pitch range were compared between diverse statistical samples of vocal and instrumental melodies. Skips occurred less frequently in vocal melodies. Skips occurred more frequently in melodies’ lower and upper ranges, but there were more low skips than high (“low-skip bias”), especially in vocal melodies. Study 2 replicated these findings in the vocal and instrumental melodies of a single composition (Bach’s Mass in B minor). Study 3 showed that among the instrumental melodies of classical composers, low-skip bias was correlated with the proportion of vocal music within composers’ total output. We propose that, to varying degrees, composers apply a vocal template to instrumental melodies.

Previous research has demonstrated that the perceived cohesiveness of an atonal rhythmically isochronous melody can be predicted by its adherence to certain "bottom-up" principles outlined in Narmour's (1990, 1991, 1992) Implication-Realization theory of melodic expectancy (Russo & Cuddy, 1995). The cohesiveness measure offers a new application of Narmour's principles. We refer to cohesiveness as a global property emerging from the total composite of notes in a melody, and thus distinct from local tone-to-tone expectancies examined in earlier studies (Cuddy & Lunney, 1995; Krumhansl, 1995; Thompson, Cuddy, & Plaus, 1996). The two experiments reported here applied the concept of principle adherence to predict listeners' judgments of cohesiveness and pleasingness of melodies and also listeners' memory for melodies. In an effort to increase ecological validity, real melodies composed by Anton Webern were selected as the stimulus contexts for both experiments.

The exponential increase of intensity for an approaching sound source provides salient information for a listener to make judgments of time to arrival (TTA). Specifically, a listener will experience a greater rate of increasing intensity for higher than for lower frequencies during a sound source’s approach. To examine the relative importance of this spectral information, listeners were asked to make judgments about the arrival times of nine 1-octave-band sound sources (the bands were consecutive, nonoverlapping single octaves, ranging from 40–80 Hz to ~10–20 kHz). As is typical in TTA tasks, listeners tended to underestimate the arrival time of the approaching sound source. In naturally occurring and independently manipulated amplification curves, bands with center frequencies between 120 and 250 Hz caused the least underestimation, and bands with center frequencies between 2000 and 7500 Hz caused the most underestimation. This spectral influence appears to be related to the greater perceived urgency of higher-frequency sounds.

Part I of this volume contains chapters that represent various disciplines that are relevant to the understanding of singing. This overall context lays the groundwork for the remaining parts of the volume which focus specifically on the development of singing. By the same token, the foundation chapters will be relevant to the remaining two volumes of the series. This chapter is divided into two sections. The first section introduces the chapters that fall within a historical and musical framework. The second section introduces chapters from scientific and medical disciplines.

The perception of movements is associated with increased activity in the human motor cortex, which in turn may underlie our ability to understand actions, as it may be implicated in the recognition, understanding and imitation of actions. Here, we investigated the involvement and lateralization of the primary motor cortex (M1) in the perception of singing and speech. Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) was applied independently for both hemispheres over the mouth representation of the motor cortex in healthy participants while they watched 4-s audiovisual excerpts of singers producing a 2-note ascending interval (singing condition) or 4-s audiovisual excerpts of a person explaining a proverb (speech condition). Subjects were instructed to determine whether a sung interval/written proverb, matched a written interval/proverb. During both tasks, motor evoked potentials (MEPs) were recorded from the contralateral mouth muscle (orbicularis oris) of the stimulated motor cortex compared to a control task. Moreover, to investigate the time course of motor activation, TMS pulses were randomly delivered at 7 different time points (ranging from 500 to 3500 ms after stimulus onset). Results show that stimulation of the right hemisphere had a similar effect on the MEPs for both the singing and speech perception tasks, whereas stimulation of the left hemisphere significantly differed in the speech perception task compared to the singing perception task. Furthermore, analysis of the MEPs in the singing task revealed that they decreased for small musical intervals, but increased for large musical intervals, regardless of which hemisphere was stimulated. Overall, these results suggest a dissociation between the lateralization of M1 activity for speech perception and for singing perception, and that in the latter case its activity can be modulated by musical parameters such as the size of a musical interval.

Theory of mind (ToM) refers to the ability to ascribe mental states to oneself and to others and how individuals may use this information to interpret the beliefs and intentions of others as distinct from their own. It is the capacity to understand people as mental beings with desires, beliefs, emotions, and intentions such that their actions, and others’ interactions with them, can be interpreted and explained by these mental states.

Spontaneous motor cortical activity during passive perception of action has been interpreted as a sensorimotor simulation of the observed action. There is currently interest in how sensorimotor simulation can support higher-up cognitive functions, such as memory, but this is relatively unexplored in the auditory domain. In the present study, we examined whether the established memory advantage for vocal melodies over non-vocal melodies is attributable to stronger sensorimotor simulation during perception of vocal relative to non-vocal action. Participants listened to 24 unfamiliar folk melodies presented in vocal or piano timbres. These were encoded during three interference conditions: whispering (vocal-motor interference), tapping (non-vocal motor interference), and no-interference. Afterwards, participants heard the original 24 melodies presented among 24 foils and judged whether melodies were old or new. A vocal-memory advantage was found in the no-interference and tapping conditions; however, the advantage was eliminated in the whispering condition. This suggests that sensorimotor simulation during the perception of vocal melodies is responsible for the observed vocal-memory advantage.

Four experiments assessed the influence of emergent-level structure on melodic processing difficulty. Emergent-level structure was manipulated across experiments and defined with reference to the Implication-Realization model of melodic expectancy (Narmour, 1990, 1992, 2000). Two measures of melodic processing difficulty were used to assess the influence of emergent-level structure: serial-reconstruction and cohesion ratings. In the serial-reconstruction experiment (Experiment 1), reconstruction was more efficient for melodies with simple emergent-level structure. In the cohesion experiments (Experiments 2-4), ratings were higher for melodies with simple emergent-level structure, and the advantage was generally greater in the presence of simple surface-level structure. Results indicate that emergent-level structure as defined by the model can influence melodic processing difficulty.

With population aging and a projected exponential expansion of persons diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease (AD), the development of treatment and prevention programs has become a fervent area of research and discovery. A growing body of evidence suggests that music exposure can enhance memory and emotional function in persons with AD. However, there is a paucity of research that aims to identify specific underlying neural mechanisms associated with music's beneficial effects in this particular population. As such, this paper reviews existing anecdotal and empirical evidence related to the enhancing effects of music exposure on cognitive function and further provides a discussion on the potential underlying mechanisms that may explain music's beneficial effect. Specifically, this paper will outline the potential role of the dopaminergic system, the autonomic nervous system, and the default network in explaining how music may enhance memory function in persons with AD.

Previous research involving preschool children and adults suggests that moving in synchrony with others can foster cooperation. Song provides a rich oscillatory framework that supports synchronous movement and may thus be considered a powerful agent of positive social relations. In the current study, we assessed this hypothesis in a group of primary-school aged children with diverse ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds. Children participated in one of three activity conditions: group singing, group art, or competitive games. They were then asked to play a prisoner’s dilemma game as a measure of cooperation. Results showed that children who engaged in group singing were more cooperative than children who engaged in group art or competitive games.

The greying of the world is leading to a rapid acceleration in both the healthcare costs and caregiver burden that are associated with dementia. There is an urgent need to develop new, easily scalable modalities of support. This perspective paper presents the theoretical background, rationale, and development plans for a music-based digital therapeutic to manage the neuropsychiatric symptoms of dementia, particularly agitation and anxiety. We begin by presenting the findings of a survey we conducted with key opinion leaders. The findings highlight the value of a music-based digital therapeutic for treating neuropsychiatric symptoms, particularly agitation and anxiety. We then consider the neural substrates of these neuropsychiatric symptoms before going on to evaluate randomized control trials on the efficacy of music-based interventions in their treatment. Finally, we present our development plans for the adaptation of an existing music-based digital therapeutic that was previously shown to be efficacious in the treatment of adult anxiety symptoms.

Music software applications often require similarity-finding measures. In this study, we describe an empirically derived measure for determining similarity between two melodies with multiple-note changes. The derivation of our final model involved three stages. In Stage 1, eight standard melodies were systematically varied with respect to pitch distance, pitch direction, tonal stability, metric salience and melodic contour. Comparison melodies with a one-note change were presented in transposed and nontransposed conditions. For the nontransposed condition, predictors of explained variance in similarity ratings were pitch distance, pitch direction and melodic contour. For the transposed condition, predictors were tonal stability and melodic contour. In Stage 2, we added the effects of primacy and recency. In Stage 3, comparison melodies with two-note changes were introduced, which allowed us to derive a more generalizable model capable of accommodating multiple-note changes. In a follow-up experiment, we show that our empirically derived measure of melodic similarity yielded superior performance to the Mongeau and Sankoff similarity measure. An empirically derived measure, such as the one described here, has the potential to extend the domain of similarity-finding methods in music information retrieval, on the basis of psychological predictors.

The verbal identity n-back task is commonly used to assess verbal working memory (VWM) capacity. Only three studies have compared brain activation during the n-back when using auditory and visual stimuli. The earliest study, a positron emission tomography study of the 3-back, found no differences in VWM-related brain activation between n-back modalities. In contrast, two subsequent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies of the 2-back found that auditory VWM was associated with greater left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DL-PFC) activation than visual VWM, perhaps suggesting that auditory VWM requires more cognitive effort than its visual counterpart. The current study aimed to assess whether DL-PFC activation (i.e., cognitive effort) differs by VWM modality. To do this, 16 younger adults completed an auditory and visual n-back, both at four levels of VWM load. Concurrently, activation of the PFC was measured using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), a silent neuroimaging method. We found that DL-PFC activation increased with VWM load, but it was not affected by VWM modality or the interaction between load and modality. This supports the view that both VWM modalities require similar cognitive effort, and perhaps that previous fMRI results were an artefact of scanner noise. We also found that, across conditions, DL-PFC activation was positively correlated with reaction time. This may further support DL-PFC activation as an index of cognitive effort, and fNIRS as a method to measure it.

Objectives: Parkinson's disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disease leading to motor impairments and dystonia across diverse muscle groups including vocal muscles. The vocal production challenges associated with PD have received considerably less research attention than the primary gross motor symptoms of the disease despite having a substantial effect on quality of life. Increasingly, people living with PD are discovering group singing as an asset-based approach to community building that is purported to strengthen vocal muscles and improve vocal quality.

Study design/methods: The present study investigated the impact of community choir on vocal production in people living with PD across two sites. Prior to and immediately following a 12-week community choir at each site, vocal testing included a range of vocal-acoustic measures, including lowest and highest achievable pitch, duration of phonation, loudness, jitter, and shimmer.

Results: Results showed that group singing significantly improved some, though not all, measures of vocal production. Group singing improved lowest pitch (both groups), duration (both groups), intensity (one group), and jitter (one group) and shimmer (both groups).

Conclusions: These findings support community choir as a feasible and scalable complementary approach to managing vocal production challenges associated with PD.

There has been an explosion of research on sensation and perception in music over the past 20 years. Although this work has historically concentrated on sensation and perception related to pitch, more recent work has branched out to encompass timbre, rhythm, and the interaction of these basic dimensions that underlie our experience of music. The methods employed in what has become a vast research enterprise span psychophysical, behavioral, computational, and neural approaches. To provide some structure, the chapter has been divided into four major sections. The first section deals with pitch perception and processing. The second section considers perceptual aspects of music beyond pitch, inclusive of timbre, consonance, melodic expectancies, and tonal hierarchies. The third section examines the role of time in the representation of longer excerpts of music, focusing on rhythm and event hierarchies. The final section reflects on those aspects of music that appear to be universal as well as the possible origins of music.

Prior research has revealed a native-accent advantage, whereby nonnative-accented speech is more difficult to process than native-accented speech. Nonnative-accented speakers also experience more negative social judgments. In the current study, we asked three questions. First, does exposure to nonnative-accented speech increase speech intelligibility or decrease listening effort, thereby narrowing the native-accent advantage? Second, does lower intelligibility or higher listening effort contribute to listeners’ negative social judgments of speakers? Third and finally, does increased intelligibility or decreased listening effort with exposure to speech bring about more positive social judgments of speakers? To address these questions, normal-hearing adults listened to a block of English sentences with a native accent and a block with nonnative accent. We found that once participants were accustomed to the task, intelligibility was greater for nonnative-accented speech and increased similarly with exposure for both accents. However, listening effort decreased only for nonnative-accented speech, soon reaching the level of native-accented speech. In addition, lower intelligibility and higher listening effort was associated with lower ratings of speaker warmth, speaker competence, and willingness to interact with the speaker. Finally, competence ratings increased over time to a similar extent for both accents, with this relationship fully mediated by intelligibility and listening effort. These results offer insight into how listeners process and judge unfamiliar speakers.

[para. 2]: “Modern day technology has been integrated into areas of our lives we would never have imagined 10 years ago. Two such examples are: (a) smart clothing, which contains electronic devices seamlessly incorporated into fabric, which sense, interpret and adapt to a variety of situations; and (b) wearable technology, which integrates removable computing devices into clothing (Seymour, 2008). Medical, protective and performance sport apparel sectors were early technology adopters, utilizing interdisciplinary teams to research and design products.”

Musicians have considerable experience naming pitch-classes with verbal (e.g., Doh, Ré, and Mi) and semiotic tags (e.g., musical notation). On the one end of the spectrum, musicians can identify the pitch of a piano tone or quality of a chord without a reference tone [i.e., absolute pitch (AP) or relative pitch], which suggests strong associations between the perceived pitch information and verbal labels. Here, we examined the strength of this association using auditory versions of the Stroop task while neuro-electric brain activity was measured using high-density electroencephalography. In separate blocks of trials, participants were presented with congruent or incongruent auditory words from English language (standard auditory Stroop), Romanic solemnization, or German key lexicons (the latter two versions require some knowledge of music notation). We hypothesized that musically trained groups would show greater Stroop interference effects when presented with incongruent musical notations than non-musicians. Analyses of behavioral data revealed small or even non-existent congruency effects in musicians for solfège and keycodes versions of the Stroop task. This finding was unexpected and appears inconsistent with the hypothesis that musical training and AP are associated with high strength response level associations between a perceived pitch and verbal label. The analyses of event-related potentials revealed three temporally distinct modulations associated with conflict processing. All three modulations were larger in the auditory word Stroop than in the other two versions of the Stroop task. Only AP musicians showed significant congruity effects around 450 and 750 ms post-stimulus when stimuli were presented as Germanic keycodes (i.e., C or G). This finding suggests that AP possessors may process alpha-numeric encodings as word forms with a semantic value, unlike their RP possessing counterparts and non-musically trained individuals. However, the strength of musical conditional associations may not exceed that of standard language in speech.

Vocal training typically emphasizes aspects of production that are important to pitch and voice quality such as vocal control and breathing. By contrast, visually available aspects of production tend to receive far less attention. Nonetheless, recent research suggests that visual aspects of performance are relevant to audience experience, influencing perception of emotion and structure. With regard to the latter, a linear relation has been demonstrated between the size of sung melodic intervals and the extent of head movement, eyebrow lifting, and mouth opening. Observers track these visually available aspects of song production, and they influence judgments of interval size in a manner that is pre-attentive and automatic. We wondered whether the emphasis on vocal control in classical training might somehow interfere with visual aspects of performance. We asked classically trained and competent amateur vocalists to produce ascending melodic intervals ranging in size from unison to octave. Participants were asked to make estimates of interval size based on observation of visual-only recordings. Accuracy of estimates was higher for intervals that were produced by the untrained group. This provocative finding may have implications for vocal pedagogy.

There is provided a method and a system for presenting audio signals as vibrotactile stimuli to the body in accordance with a Model Human Cochlea (MHC). Audio signals are obtained for presentation. The audio signals are separated into multiple bands of discrete frequency ranges that encompass the complete audio signal. Those signals are output to multiple vibrotactile devices. The vibrotactile devices may be positioned in a respective housing to intensify and constrain a vibrational energy from the vibrotactile devices. Output of the vibrotactile devices stimulate the cutaneous receptors of the skin at the locations where the vibrotactile devices are placed. In one embodiment, a system implements this method using audio voice coils that are embedded in a chair, which make contact with the human body while seated.

The model human cochlea (MHC) is a sensory substitution technique for presenting music as multiple discrete channels of vibrotactile stimuli. The MHC prototype was introduced to a group of deaf senior citizens at a community centre, where they could try the chair, and provide us with feedback about their experience. Preliminary results from this work suggest that the MHC can potentially offer a more effective means of expressing basic emotional information from music in a vibrotactile display when the signals more closely match the perceptual elements of the music such as melody and instrument parts. We describe the MHC prototype and present the results of our field study, which extends our lab experiments with the MHC to include deaf and hard of hearing participants in a real world setting.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of the valence and arousal dimensions of music over the time course of physiological (skin conductance level and heart rate) and subjective (Subjective Unit of Discomfort score) recovery from an acute stressor. Participants experienced stress after being told to prepare a speech, and were then exposed to happy, peaceful, sad, or agitated music. Music with a positive valence promoted both subjective and physiological recovery better than music with a negative valence, and low-arousal music was more effective than high-arousal music. Repeated measures analyses found that the emotion conveyed by the music affected skin conductance level recovery immediately following the stressor, whereas it affected heart rate recovery in a more sustained fashion. Follow-up tests found that positively valenced low-arousal (i.e., peaceful) music was more effective across the time course than an emotionally neutral control (white noise).

Witnessing a person who stutters sing can be fascinating: suddenly stuttering seems to completely disappear. The fluency-enhancing effect of singing incites researchers to investigate the mechanisms leading to this remarkable reduction of stuttering symptoms. However, no explanation can yet fully account for this phenomenon. In this chapter, we review the evidence collected so far and discuss future avenues of research and the potential for therapeutic applications.

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Human song exhibits great structural diversity, yet certain aspects of melodic shape (how pitch is patterned over time) are widespread. These include a predominance of arch-shaped and descending melodic contours in musical phrases, a tendency for phrase-final notes to be relatively long, and a bias toward small pitch movements between adjacent notes in a melody [Huron D (2006) Sweet Anticipation: Music and the Psychology of Expectation (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA)]. What is the origin of these features? We hypothesize that they stem from motor constraints on song production (i.e., the energetic efficiency of their underlying motor actions) rather than being innately specified. One prediction of this hypothesis is that any animals subject to similar motor constraints on song will exhibit similar melodic shapes, no matter how distantly related those animals are to humans. Conversely, animals who do not share similar motor constraints on song will not exhibit convergent melodic shapes. Birds provide an ideal case for testing these predictions, because their peripheral mechanisms of song production have both notable similarities and differences from human vocal mechanisms [Riede T, Goller F (2010) Brain Lang 115:69–80]. We use these similarities and differences to make specific predictions about shared and distinct features of human and avian song structure and find that these predictions are confirmed by empirical analysis of diverse human and avian song samples.

[para. 1]: “Peripheral physiological responses are triggered during music perception and performance, particularly for music that conveys intense emotion. The arousal dimension of emotion has been linked to activation of the sympathetic nervous system, typically assessed by changes in respiration, perspiration, heart rate, blood pressure, and skin temperature. The valence dimension of emotion has been linked to changes in facial muscle activity and heart rate. These peripheral changes are triggered following a central response, and in the case of induced emotions, may be mediated by the release of neurochemicals such as oxytocin and cortisol along the hypothalamic-pituitaryadrenal axis.”

We conceptualize infant song as a dynamic, multimodal form of communication between mother and infant that originated to support infant care in harsh conditions. The propensity for infant-directed singing has persisted across millennia despite vast improvements in living circumstances and outcomes because it continues to facilitate caregiving and enhance parent–infant bonds. Nonetheless, there are notable differences across cultures, which arise from divergent social and economic circumstances and contrasting conceptions of infants. Unimodal infant-directed singing has notable effects on infant attention and affect, but multimodal singing has particularly important consequences for parent–infant dyads in ordinary as well as atypical circumstances.

We examined facial responses to audio-visual presentations of emotional singing. Although many studies have now found evidence for facial responses to emotional stimuli, most have involved static facial expressions and none have involved singing. Singing represents a dynamic ecologically valid emotional stimulus with unique demands on orofacial motion that are independent of emotion, related to pitch and linguistic production. Observers’ facial muscles were recorded with electromyography while they saw and heard recordings of a vocalist’s performance sung with different emotional intentions (happy, neutral, and sad). Audio-visual presentations successfully elicited facial mimicry in observers that were congruent with the performer’s intended emotions. Happy singing performances elicited increased activity in the zygomaticus major muscle region of observers, while sad performances evoked increased activity in the corrugator supercilii muscle region. These spontaneous facial muscle responses occurred within the first three seconds following onset of video presentation indicating that emotional nuances of singing performances can elicit dynamic facial responses from observers.

A field study of preferred listening levels for music played on personal stereo players (PSP) was performed. Simultaneous recordings were made of PSP sound output levels and ambient noise levels in three environments in the city of Toronto, the subway (TTC), a busy street corner in Dundas Square, and a university library, Ryerson. Potential participants were approached in the same environment in which recordings were made. The initial contact was made nonverbally by gesturing for the user to remove the earphones. The majority of users followed the nonverbal request by removing one or both of the earbuds. Music levels were obtained by porting headphone-out of the PSP directly to mic-in of laptop and applying a correction factor to approximate the sound level that would be obtained with earbuds. The highest music levels were observed in the street environment.

The experience of pitch relations is known to be in fluenced by timbral brightness, Because phonemes naturally v ary in their extent of brightness, we wondered whether the experi- ence of pitch relations in vocal music was influenc ed by phoneme content. Three-tone sequences were synthesi zed so as to vary with regard to both pitch and phoneme con- tent. Perceived interval size was found to vary as a function of the interaction between normalized spectral cent roid and pitch contour, with larger pitch distances asso ciated with sequences possessing congruent contours. Propo sals concerning the underlying mechanism and various imp lica- tions of the findings are discussed.

The ideomotor principle predicts that perception will modulate action where overlap exists between perceptual and motor representations of action. This effect is demonstrated with auditory stimuli. Previous perceptual evidence suggests that pitch contour and pitch distance in tone sequences may elicit tonal motion effects consistent with listeners' implicit awareness of the lawful dynamics of locomotive bodies. To examine modulating effects of perception on action, participants in a continuation tapping task produced a steady tempo. Auditory tones were triggered by each tap. Pitch contour randomly and persistently varied within trials. Pitch distance between successive tones varied between trials. Although participants were instructed to ignore them, tones systematically affected finger dynamics and timing. Where pitch contour implied positive acceleration, the following tap and the intertap interval (ITI) that it completed were faster. Where pitch contour implied negative acceleration, the following tap and the ITI that it completed were slower. Tempo was faster with greater pitch distance. Musical training did not predict the magnitude of these effects. There were no generalized effects on timing variability. Pitch contour findings demonstrate how tonal motion may elicit the spontaneous production of accents found in expressive music performance.

We used eye tracking to examine the relative influence of the mouth and eyes on perception of sung interval size. Frequency and duration of gaze were tracked while participants rated the size of intervals produced by two singers in three signal-to-noise conditions, corresponding to high, medium and low audibility. All intervals ascended in pitch direction and ranged in size from 0 to 12 semitones. Both the frequency and duration of gaze fixations revealed that the mouth was the most salient aspect of the visual channel. However, gaze was diverted away from the mouth and toward the eyes with increasing audibility, interval size, and tonal consonance of intervals. A linear regression model incorporating all of these variables accounted for 50% of the variability in gaze duration for the mouth and 45% of the variability in gaze duration for the eyes. Results are discussed in the context of dynamic allocation of attentional resources on the basis of early registration of sensory input. This is the first study of singing to incorporate eye-tracking methodology.

This chapter provides an overview of multisensory processing in music by individuals with normal hearing, hearing loss, and deafness. The first section provides an account of theory and evidence regarding the neural mechanisms underpinning multisensory processing. The second section considers auditory-only processing of music with a focus on lateralization, basic modularity, and pathways. The final section considers non-auditory and multisensory processing of pitch, timbre, and rhythm. For each dimension, psychophysical evidence is presented before reviewing the extant neuroscientific evidence. Where no neuroscientific evidence exists, proposals have been made about the types of neural mechanisms that may be involved. Neuroplastic changes following deafness are also considered. The chapter ultimately argues that although most individuals will justifiably focus on sound as the core of music processing, a more inclusive and nuanced consideration of music takes a multisensory perspective, involving the integration of inputs from auditory, visual, somatosensory, vestibular, and motor areas.

Objectives:

Children who use cochlear implants (CIs) have characteristic pitch processing deficits leading to impairments in music perception and in understanding emotional intention in spoken language. Music training for normal-hearing children has previously been shown to benefit perception of emotional prosody. The purpose of the present study was to assess whether deaf children who use CIs obtain similar benefits from music training. We hypothesized that music training would lead to gains in auditory processing and that these gains would transfer to emotional speech prosody perception.

Design:

Study participants were 18 child CI users (ages 6 to 15). Participants received either 6 months of music training (i.e., individualized piano lessons) or 6 months of visual art training (i.e., individualized painting lessons). Measures of music perception and emotional speech prosody perception were obtained pre-, mid-, and post-training. The Montreal Battery for Evaluation of Musical Abilities was used to measure five different aspects of music perception (scale, contour, interval, rhythm, and incidental memory). The emotional speech prosody task required participants to identify the emotional intention of a semantically neutral sentence under audio-only and audiovisual conditions.

Results:

Music training led to improved performance on tasks requiring the discrimination of melodic contour and rhythm, as well as incidental memory for melodies. These improvements were predominantly found from mid- to post-training. Critically, music training also improved emotional speech prosody perception. Music training was most advantageous in audio-only conditions. Art training did not lead to the same improvements.

Conclusions:

Music training can lead to improvements in perception of music and emotional speech prosody, and thus may be an effective supplementary technique for supporting auditory rehabilitation following cochlear implantation.

The last section of the CSA Standard CAN/CSA-Z107.56-06 (R2011) - Procedures for the Measurement of Occupational Noise Exposure - deals with communication headsets. This section is typically applied in retail, call centers, airport control towers, and other settings where an operator is exposed to background noise while communicating with a headset. Because the user adjusts the volume to hear speech comfortably, the total equivalent sound level is a function of the level of the background noise minus the attenuation provided by the headset, plus a comfortable signal/noise ratio, estimated to be 13.5 dBA. Despite ample research demonstrating the role of spectral and temporal factors in speech masking, the standard is applied consistently regardless of the type of background.

Five experiments investigated the ability to discriminate between musical timbres based on vibrotactile stimulation alone. Participants made same/different judgments on pairs of complex waveforms presented sequentially to the back through voice coils embedded in a conforming chair. Discrimination between cello, piano, and trombone tones matched for F0, duration, and magnitude was above chance with white noise masking the sound output of the voice coils (Experiment 1), with additional masking to control for bone-conducted sound (Experiment 2), and among a group of deaf individuals (Experiment 4a). Hearing (Experiment 3) and deaf individuals (Experiment 4b) also successfully discriminated between dull and bright timbres varying only with regard to spectral centroid. We propose that, as with auditory discrimination of musical timbre, vibrotactile discrimination may involve the cortical integration of filtered output from frequency-tuned mechanoreceptors functioning as critical bands.

Speech and song are universal forms of vocal expression that reflect distinct channels of communication. While these two forms of expression share a common means of sound production, differences in the acoustic properties of speech and song have not received significant attention. Here, we present evidence of acoustic differences in the speaking and singing voice. Twenty-four actors were recorded while speaking and singing different statements with five emotions, two emotional intensities, and two repetitions. Acoustic differences of speech and song were reported in several acoustic parameters, including vocal loudness, spectral properties, and vocal quality. Interestingly, emotion was conveyed similarly in many acoustic features across speech and song. These results demonstrate the entwined nature of speech and song, and provide evidence in support of the shared emergence speech and song as a form of early proto-language. These recordings form part of our new Ryerson Audio-Visual Database of Emotional Speech and Song (RAVDESS) that will be freely released in 2013.

Despite the rise in research investigating music and emotion over the last decade, there are no validated measures of individual differences in emotional responses to music. We created the Absorption in Music Scale (AIMS), a 34-item measure of individuals’ ability and willingness to allow music to draw them into an emotional experience. It was evaluated with a sample of 166 participants, and exhibits good psychometric properties. The scale converges well with measures of similar constructs, and shows reliability over time. Importantly, in a test of criterion validity, emotional responses to music were correlated with the AIMS scale but not correlated with measures of empathy or music training.

Humans show a striking advantage for synchronizing movements with discretely timed auditory metronomes (e.g., clicking sounds) over temporally matched visual metronomes (e.g., flashing lights), suggesting enhanced auditory-motor coupling for rhythmic processing. Does the auditory advantage persist for other modalities (not just vision)? Here, nonmusicians finger tapped to the beat of auditory, tactile, and bimodal metronomes. Stimulus magnitude and rhythmic complexity were also manipulated. In conditions involving a large area of stimulation and simple rhythmic sequences, tactile synchronization closely matched auditory. Although this finding shows a limitation to the hypothesis of enhanced auditory-motor coupling for rhythmic processing, other findings clearly support it. First, there was a robust advantage with auditory information for synchronization with complex rhythm sequences; moreover, in complex sequences a measure of error correction was found only when auditory information was present. Second, higher order grouping was evident only when auditory information was present.

This first definitive reference resource to take a broad interdisciplinary approach to the nexus between music and the social and behavioral sciences examines how music affects human beings and their interactions in and with the world. The interdisciplinary nature of the work provides a starting place for students to situate the status of music within the social sciences in fields such as anthropology, communications, psychology, linguistics, sociology, sports, political science and economics, as well as biology and the health sciences.

Features: Approximately 450 articles, arranged in A-to-Z fashion and richly illustrated with photographs, provide the social and behavioral context for examining the importance of music in society.; Entries are authored and signed by experts in the field and conclude with references and further readings, as well as cross references to related entries.; A Reader's Guide groups related entries by broad topic areas and themes, making it easy for readers to quickly identify related entries.; A Chronology of Music places material into historical context; a Glossary defines key terms from the field; and a Resource Guide provides lists of books, academic journals, websites and cross-references.; The multimedia digital edition is enhanced with video and audio clips and features strong search-and-browse capabilities through the electronic Reader's Guide, detailed index, and cross references.

Music in the Social and Behavioral Sciences, available in both multimedia digital and print formats, is a must-have reference for music and social science library collections.

The perception of an event is strongly influenced by the context in which it occurs. Here, we examined the effect of a rhythmic context on detection of asynchrony in both the auditory and vibrotactile modalities. Using the method of constant stimuli and a two-alternative forced choice (2AFC), participants were presented with pairs of pure tones played either simultaneously or with various levels of stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA). Target stimuli in both modalities were nested within either: (i) a regularly occurring, predictable rhythm (ii) an irregular, unpredictable rhythm, or (iii) no rhythm at all. Vibrotactile asynchrony detection had higher thresholds and showed greater variability than auditory asynchrony detection in general. Asynchrony detection thresholds for auditory targets but not vibrotactile targets were significantly reduced when the target stimulus was embedded in a regular rhythm as compared to no rhythm. Embedding within an irregular rhythm produced no such improvement. The observed modality asymmetries are interpreted with regard to the superior temporal resolution of the auditory system and specialized brain circuitry supporting auditory–motor coupling.

Ludwig van Beethoven suffered many hardships in his life, but the least known among them may be the persistent slivers he endured while handling wood. Yes, wood! Be it through clenching a wooden stick between his teeth or cutting the legs off of a grand piano, he is said to have developed resourceful methods that enabled him to feel mechanical vibrations of music in an effort to compensate for his failing sense of hearing (Wallace, 2018). Indeed, by all accounts, Beethoven was profoundly deaf by the time he composed his masterful ninth symphony. Stories of its debut in Vienna in 1824 suggest that Beethoven had to be turned around to see the rapturous applause of the audience.

The notion of feeling music continues to this day (Moore, 2019). Cities around the world host Deaf raves—giant parties where dancers feel the music through powerful subwoofers and bass shakers connected to floorboards. They also dance to the music, taking inspiration from visualizations that are projected onto large overhead screens. There is also a growing cadre of deaf musicians who are performing signed music (see bit.ly/37sQv4h). This music tends to be beat heavy, featuring lyrics delivered through sign language. Fueled in part by this cultural interest, researchers have begun to investigate the processes that enable deaf music and the ways in which auditory and nonauditory modalities combine to influence the experience of music for listeners of varying hearing ability

Group singing elevates mood, increases social bonding, and regulates stress. However, the question remains as to how much of the singer’s mood-boost is derived from social aspects of group singing and how much can be achieved through singing alone. In the current study, we adopted a sociobiological approach to investigate the underpinnings of the mood-boosting effect of singing. Using a within-subjects design, self-report mood, salivary oxytocin, and salivary cortisol were assessed before and after group and individual singing conditions. This study uncovered several important findings: group singing elevated mood, whereas individual singing did not. Importantly, although both group and individual singing led to decreases in cortisol, only group singing led to increases in oxytocin. Further analysis revealed that oxytocin, but not cortisol, significantly correlated with mood. These findings suggest that the mood-boosting effect of singing is likely due to social aspects and is influenced by changes in oxytocin.

Sensorimotor brain areas have been implicated in the recognition of emotion expressed on the face and through nonverbal vocalizations. However, no previous study has assessed whether sensorimotor cortices are recruited during the perception of emotion in speech—a signal that includes both audio (speech sounds) and visual (facial speech movements) components. To address this gap in the literature, we recruited 24 participants to listen to speech clips produced in a way that was either happy, sad, or neutral in expression. These stimuli also were presented in one of three modalities: audio-only (hearing the voice but not seeing the face), video-only (seeing the face but not hearing the voice), or audiovisual. Brain activity was recorded using electroencephalography, subjected to independent component analysis, and source-localized. We found that the left presupplementary motor area was more active in response to happy and sad stimuli than neutral stimuli, as indexed by greater mu event-related desynchronization. This effect did not differ by the sensory modality of the stimuli. Activity levels in other sensorimotor brain areas did not differ by emotion, although they were greatest in response to visual-only and audiovisual stimuli. One possible explanation for the pre-SMA result is that this brain area may actively support speech emotion recognition by using our extensive experience expressing emotion to generate sensory predictions that in turn guide our perception.