Abstract
Long-term music training has been shown to affect different cognitive and perceptual abilities. However, it is less well known whether it can also affect the perception of emotion from music, especially purely rhythmic music. Hence, we asked a group of 16 non-musicians, 16 musicians with no drumming experience, and 16 drummers to judge the level of expressiveness, the valence (positive and negative), and the category of emotion perceived from 96 drumming improvisation clips (audio-only, video-only, and audiovideo) that varied in several music features (e.g., musical genre, tempo, complexity, drummer’s expressiveness, and drummer’s style). Our results show that the level and type of music training influence the perceived expressiveness, valence, and emotion from solo drumming improvisation. Overall, non-musicians, non-drummer musicians, and drummers were affected differently by changes in some characteristics of the music performance, for example musicians (with and without drumming experience) gave a greater weight to the visual performance than non-musicians when giving their emotional judgments. These findings suggest that besides influencing several cognitive and perceptual abilities, music training also affects how we perceive emotion from music.
Highlights
Music can be found in different forms in all human cultures, and it is recognised as an important means of emotion communication
Because our aim was to examine whether music practise can affect how we perceive emotions communicated by others through music, we examined whether music practise affects the perception, rather than the feeling, of emotions from music performance
The fixed effects entered in the models were: group as a betweensubject factor (3 levels: non-musicians, non-drummer musicians, or drummers), and musical genre (2 levels: jazz or heavy metal), tempo (2 levels: 60 or 120 beats per minute), drummer’s expressiveness (2 levels: with minimal or maximum expressive interpretation of the music), sensory modality (3 levels: audioonly, video-only, or audio-visual clips), complexity (2 levels: complex or simple rhythms), and drummer’s style (2 levels: open or crossed arms) as within-subjects factors
Summary
Music can be found in different forms in all human cultures, and it is recognised as an important means of emotion communication. The present study contributes to the emerging literature regarding the relation between musical expertise and expressiveness/emotion perception from music (e.g., Bhatara et al, 2011; Lima and Castro, 2011a; Castro and Lima, 2014). This knowledge will increase understanding of the effects of music practise on emotional, cognitive, and perceptual processes and assess whether. Music Training Effects on Perceived Emotion music can be used as an efficient and cost effective treatment for individuals with socio-emotional disorders (e.g., autistic and schizophrenic individuals).
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