Doctoral Colloquium (Music): Iza Korsmit, Lena Heng

The communication of affective intent in music has been a topic of great research interest across many different disciplines. How musical affect might be perceived by listeners could be influenced by their musical backgrounds and the style of the piece of music they are listening to. Another important question is how acoustic and musical features influence listeners' responses in global judgements of a short excerpt and when presented with a lengthy piece of music, a phenomenon that is commonplace in normal music listening experiences.

The first part of this presentation discusses how acoustic features interact and contribute to listeners' global judgement of perceived affective intention and highlights the differences between listeners with different musical training. Next continuous response of listeners to a piece of orchestral music are explored. Similar to the first set of experiments, results on continuous rating of a lengthy piece of music also demonstrates the effect of training in different musical traditions (Western and Chinese music, and nonmusicians). Arousal responses appear to be more universal and culture-independent, while valence responses seem to be more tied to training and experience in particular musical traditions. An exploration of the acoustic and musical parameters within the piece of music also reveals complex interactions with the musical and narrative content of the music.

Research Interests of Lena Heng:

Title: Musical affect: Effects of timbre, affect locus, and individual differences

Abstract: 

The power of music to express emotions and alter the feelings of the music listener is one of the main reasons why people play or listen to music. This project aims to further uncover theaffective effect of music. We focus on the musical aspect of timbre, but also widen our scope to examine the influence of affect locus (i.e., perceived/induced), individual differences, and different theoretical representations of affect. Timbre, here, is considered as it changes with instrument family, but also with pitch height. We examine affect locus, because, for example, the sadness that is perceived in the music, may not be similarly felt. Individual differences, like personality traits or musical background, may further influence the affective response of the music listener. Finally, there is an ongoing debate on the nature of human affect, and consequently how to quantify the affective response. We will compare the results from two affect models: dimensional and discrete.

We set up online experiments in which participants rated the perceived and induced affect of different musical stimuli and answered questionnaires on their individual differences. Comparing the different theoretical representations of affect, we find that in this experimental context, two dimensions of valence and energy arousal best represent the affective experience of the listeners. Sources of individual differences like musical background and personality influence how participants rate their perceived and induced affect. For pitch height, we see that pitch is mostly related to affect in a u-shaped manner (e.g., the middle registers are least angry and most positive), except for sadness and energy which show a linear relationship to pitch height. For instrument family, we find that pitched percussion stands out from the other instruments families as the most positive, and least angry. For affect locus, we see that any affect that is considered unpleasant (like anger, sadness, negative valence, or tiredness) is more strongly perceived than induced, especially in the lower pitch registers. Finally, we find that especially the effect of instrument family is moderated by individual differences, such as musical background, pre-existing mood, personality, and musical preferences.

Research Interests of Iza Korsmit:

I am an interdisciplinary PhD student at the Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory (MPCL), supervised by Prof. Stephen McAdams. My interdisciplinary background is founded in musicology and cognitive psychology. The main motivation for my research is that I want to understand why and how music is so effectively able to express and induce feelings. Can you play a sad song on the banjo? Why do I enjoy sad music, and some people don't? How can I know what you are feeling? In my research, I try to take a holistic approach by considering both the music, the listener, and the different theories and methodologies related to affective processing. I am also doing research on the multidimensional nature of timbre perception and, unrelated to music, the psychological disorder of misophonia, which is characterized by extreme aversive responses to specific environmental sounds.