Musical emotion recognition in bimodal patients

Abstract

Several cues are used to convey musical emotion, the two primary being musical mode and musical tempo. Specifically, major and minor modes are regarded as having positive and negative valence, respectively, and songs at fast tempi (i.e., quarter note = 92-196, Gosselin et al. (2005); quarter note = 80-255, Peretz et al. (1998)) are associated with more positive valence compared to songs at slow tempi (i.e., quarter note = 40-60, Gosselin et al. (2005); quarter note = 20-100, Peretz et al. (1998)). Caldwell et al. (2015) demonstrated that CI users relied on tempo (fast vs. slow) with little regard for mode (major vs. minor) when interpreting musical emotion, a finding consistent with spectral cues being poorly represented in CI users. The current study is an extension of Caldwell et al. (2015) examining how mode and tempo cues impact musical emotion recognition in bimodal listeners. Our primary hypothesis is that, unlike CI only users, bimodal listeners—with access to F0 and fine structure—will utilize both mode and tempo cues in a manner similar to normal-hearing listeners. Our secondary hypothesis is that low-frequency spectral resolution in the contralateral ear (via tuning curves and spectral modulation detection) will be significantly correlated with degree of bimodal benefit for musical emotion perception.