Perception Of Dissonance Research Articles

How conventional arms control failures caused the Russo-Ukraine War

ABSTRACT What role did conventional arms control (CAC) agreements failures play in Russia's decision to invade Ukraine? Using a process tracing and counterfactual mixed methodology analyzing Russia's invasion motivations, this article attempts to answer the question by assessing Russian strategic policies, proposals, and arms control agreements. These demonstrate that Russia, seeing its sense of “indivisible security” being violated, sought to adjust or establish new CAC agreements to address a growing conventional military imbalance between NATO and Russia. Having failed to establish a fixed and stable conventional military balance through CAC, and as Ukraine edged closer to NATO membership, Russia resorted to the use of force shortly after their December 2021 proposals were not accepted. The article concludes by suggesting that this case supports arms racing and arms-control related causes of war theories, and that dissonant perceptions of the actual or ideal military balance can lead to conflict.

A system sciences approach to consonance/dissonance: From biological constraints to cultural differences: Reply to comments on: “Consonance and dissonance perception. A critical review of the historical sources, multidisciplinary findings, and main hypotheses”

A system sciences approach to consonance/dissonance: From biological constraints to cultural differences: Reply to comments on: “Consonance and dissonance perception. A critical review of the historical sources, multidisciplinary findings, and main hypotheses”

Home buyout without relocation: An examination of dissonant hazard mitigation perceptions among Gulf Coast residents

AbstractRelocation has become a major thrust of hazard mitigation policy. Home buyout programs are currently the primary policy tool to facilitate permanent voluntary relocation of households out of flood‐prone areas. This study seeks to evaluate public perceptions of relocation and home buyouts to better understand: Are home buyouts perceived by the public as a means to relocate away from risk? If not—who has dissonant perceptions? An original survey of Gulf Coast residents demonstrates that about 30% of households have dissonant perceptions of home buyout programs in relation to relocation away from disaster risk. Among those with aligned perceptions, individuals with higher risk perceptions and disaster experiences are more likely to consider relocating and participating in a home buyout; the same is not evident among those with dissonant perceptions. The individual‐level factors associated with dissonant relocation‐home buyout perceptions suggest that this part of the community may be misdirecting efforts and resources dedicated for community‐wide hazard risk reduction. These findings should be used to develop more efficient policy tools to facilitate retreat from the most flood‐prone areas.

Calls of the wild: Exploring the evolutionary roots of consonance and dissonance: Comment on “Consonance and dissonance perception: A critical review of historical sources, multidisciplinary findings, and main hypotheses” by N. Di Stefano, P. Vuust and E. Brattico

Calls of the wild: Exploring the evolutionary roots of consonance and dissonance: Comment on “Consonance and dissonance perception: A critical review of historical sources, multidisciplinary findings, and main hypotheses” by N. Di Stefano, P. Vuust and E. Brattico

Data-driven theory formulation or theory-driven data interpretation?: Comment on "Consonance and dissonance perception. A critical review of the historical sources, multidisciplinary findings, and main hypotheses" by Di Stefano et al.

Data-driven theory formulation or theory-driven data interpretation?: Comment on "Consonance and dissonance perception. A critical review of the historical sources, multidisciplinary findings, and main hypotheses" by Di Stefano et al.

Predicting Tourist Revisit Intention by Applying the Extended Model of Goal-Directed Behaviour and Cognitive Dissonance Theory

The primary aim of this study was to provide a better understanding of the decision-making cycle of Chinese and Japanese tourists by testing the hypothesis via an extended model of goal-directed behavior. This study was also aimed at extending the concept of the goal-direct model and cognitive dissonance theory by examining the revisit intention for tourism. These two countries represent more than half of the tourism market in Korea. Despite the huge market potential of Chinese and Japanese tourists, relatively little study has been founded on predicting the revisit intention of inbounded tourists. A survey material was developed by adapting measures used in previous studies that assessed the push factor, pull factor, attitude, subjective norm, perceived behavioral control, anticipated emotion, desire, cognitive dissonance, and revisit intention. Note that 580 cases were on-site surveyed as popular tourist destinations in Seoul, South Korea. The 545 cases were analyzed for the final results. Statistical analysis was conducted through demographic analysis, Confirmatory factor analysis, and SEM (Structural Equation Model) analyses. This study found that the decision to go to Korea is a sound, enthusiastic, and delicate choice measured by the variable of the MGB. Results likewise showed that the theory could be extended to incorporate the impact of inbound visitors' perception of cognitive dissonance. This study is to recognize the decision-making process influencing the revisit intention of Chinese and Japanese tourists and draw academic and practical implications from the difference of the impact on each element.

Consonance Perception in Congenital Amusia: Behavioral and Brain Responses to Harmonicity and Beating Cues.

Congenital amusia is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by difficulties in the perception and production of music, including the perception of consonance and dissonance, or the judgment of certain combinations of pitches as more pleasant than others. Two perceptual cues for dissonance are inharmonicity (the lack of a common fundamental frequency between components) and beating (amplitude fluctuations produced by close, interacting frequency components). Amusic individuals have previously been reported to be insensitive to inharmonicity, but to exhibit normal sensitivity to beats. In the present study, we measured adaptive discrimination thresholds in amusic participants and found elevated thresholds for both cues. We recorded EEG and measured the MMN in evoked potentials to consonance and dissonance deviants in an oddball paradigm. The amplitude of the MMN response was similar overall for amusic and control participants; however, in controls, there was a tendency toward larger MMNs for inharmonicity than for beating cues, whereas the opposite tendency was observed for the amusic participants. These findings suggest that initial encoding of consonance cues may be intact in amusia despite impaired behavioral performance, but that the relative weight of nonspectral (beating) cues may be increased for amusic individuals.

Critical behavior and the Kibble-Zurek mechanism in a musical phase transition.

We investigate the critical phenomena emerging from a statistical mechanics model of musical harmony on a three-dimensional (3D) lattice, and the resulting structure of the ordered phase. In this model, each lattice site represents a tone, with nearest neighbors interacting via the perception of dissonance between them. With dissonance assumed to be an octave-wise periodic function of pitch difference, this model is a 3D XY system with the same symmetry and dimensionality as superfluid helium and models of the cosmological axion field. We use numerical simulation to observe a phase transition from disordered sound to ordered arrangements of musical pitches as a parameter analogous to the temperature is quenched towards zero. We observe the divergence of correlation length and relaxation time at the phase boundary, consistent with the critical exponents in similar systems. Furthermore, the quenched low-temperature phase of these systems displays topological defects in the form of vortex strings that thread throughout the system volume. We observe the formation of these vortex strings in accordance with the Kibble-Zurek mechanism, and discuss the structure of these vortex strings in the context of the theory of musical harmony, finding both similarities to established music theory, and uncovering new avenues to explore.

Consonance and dissonance perception. A critical review of the historical sources, multidisciplinary findings, and main hypotheses.

Revealed more than two millennia ago by Pythagoras, consonance and dissonance (C/D) are foundational concepts in music theory, perception, and aesthetics. The search for the biological, acoustical, and cultural factors that affect C/D perception has resulted in descriptive accounts inspired by arithmetic, musicological, psychoacoustical or neurobiological frameworks without reaching a consensus. Here, we review the key historical sources and modern multidisciplinary findings on C/D and integrate them into three main hypotheses: the vocal similarity hypothesis (VSH), the psychocultural hypothesis (PH), and the sensorimotor hypothesis (SH). By illustrating the hypotheses-related findings, we highlight their major conceptual, methodological, and terminological shortcomings. Trying to provide a unitary framework for C/D understanding, we put together multidisciplinary research on human and animal vocalizations, which converges to suggest that auditory roughness is associated with distress/danger and, therefore, elicits defensive behavioral reactions and neural responses that indicate aversion. We therefore stress the primacy of vocality and roughness as key factors in the explanation of C/D phenomenon, and we explore the (neuro)biological underpinnings of the attraction-aversion mechanisms that are triggered by C/D stimuli. Based on the reviewed evidence, while the aversive nature of dissonance appears as solidly rooted in the multidisciplinary findings, the attractive nature of consonance remains a somewhat speculative claim that needs further investigation. Finally, we outline future directions for empirical research in C/D, especially regarding cross-modal and cross-cultural approaches.

Dyad’s consonance and dissonance: combining the compactness and roughness approaches

At present, there are two approaches that aim at explaining on physical grounds the psychoacoustic perception of consonance and dissonance for dyads, whose pioneers have been, respectively, Galilei and Helmholtz: One is based on the “compactness” of the waveform of the combined signal, while the other on the absence of “roughness” due to possible beats. We perform a detailed study of each approach and find that none of the associated model versions, not even the more refined ones, is fully satisfactory when faced to perceptual data on dyads. We show that combining the two approaches results instead in a surprisingly successful agreement with perceptual data: This demonstrates that compactness and roughness are both necessary ingredients for a phenomenological description of consonance and dissonance.Graphical abstract

Pleasantness Ratings of Musical Dyads in Cochlear Implant Users.

Cochlear implants have been used to restore hearing to more than half a million people around the world. The restored hearing allows most recipients to understand spoken speech without relying on visual cues. While speech comprehension in quiet is generally high for recipients, many complain about the sound of music. The present study examines consonance and dissonance perception in nine cochlear implant users and eight people with no known hearing loss. Participants completed web-based assessments to characterize low-level psychophysical sensitivities to modulation and pitch, as well as higher-level measures of musical pleasantness and speech comprehension in background noise. The underlying hypothesis is that sensitivity to modulation and pitch, in addition to higher levels of musical sophistication, relate to higher-level measures of music and speech perception. This hypothesis tested true with strong correlations observed between measures of modulation and pitch with measures of consonance ratings and speech recognition. Additionally, the cochlear implant users who were the most sensitive to modulations and pitch, and who had higher musical sophistication scores, had similar pleasantness ratings as those with no known hearing loss. The implication is that better coding and focused rehabilitation for modulation and pitch sensitivity will broadly improve perception of music and speech for cochlear implant users.

Register impacts perceptual consonance through roughness and sharpness

The perception of consonance and dissonance in intervals and chords is influenced by psychoacoustic and cultural factors. Past research has provided conflicting observations about the role of frequency in assessing musical consonance that may stem from comparisons of limited frequency bands without much theorizing or modeling. Here we examine the effect of register on perceptual consonance of chords. Based on two acoustic principles, we predict a decrease in consonance at low frequencies (roughness) and a decrease of consonance at high frequencies (sharpness). Due to these two separate principles, we hypothesize that frequency will have a curvilinear impact on consonance. A selection of tetrads varying in consonance were presented in seven registers spanning 30 to 2600 Hz. Fifty-five participants rated the stimuli in an online experiment. The effect of register on consonance ratings was clear and largely according to the predictions; The low registers impacted consonance negatively and the highest two registers also received significantly lower consonance ratings than the middle registers. The impact of register on consonance could be accurately described with a cubic relationship. Overall, the influence of roughness was more pronounced on consonance ratings than sharpness. Together, these findings clarify previous empirical efforts to model the effect of frequency on consonance through basic acoustic principles. They further suggest that a credible account of consonance and dissonance in music needs to incorporate register.

The role of cultural heritage in visitor narratives of peatlands: analysis of online user-generated reviews from three peatland sites in England

ABSTRACT User-generated reviews of visitor attractions, on publicly available websites, such as Tripadvisor, are frequently used in tourism research but feature less often in published cultural heritage research. In this paper, we describe a qualitative analysis of the text from user-generated reviews of three peatland heritage landscapes in the United Kingdom – Ilkley Moor, Thorne and Hatfield Moors, and Shapwick Heath – to better understand the role tangible and intangible cultural heritage play in visitor perceptions and narratives of these sites. Our analysis indicates that visitors tend to emphasise natural over cultural heritage of peatland landscapes and hold plural, highly contextual and sometimes dissonant perceptions; there is no single story of peatlands. This presents both challenges and opportunities for building public appreciation of peatland cultural heritage. User-generated reviews offer, as-yet under-explored, potential data for use by heritage researchers and managers who seek to explore how visitors understand and use sites, and may also contribute to the emerging intangible heritage of heritage landscapes.

The Anatomy of Consonance/Dissonance: Evaluating Acoustic and Cultural Predictors Across Multiple Datasets with Chords

Acoustic and musical components of consonance and dissonance perception have been recently identified. This study expands the range of predictors of consonance and dissonance by three analytical operations. In Experiment 1, we identify the underlying structure of a number of central predictors of consonance and dissonance extracted from an extensive dataset of chords using a hierarchical cluster analysis. Four feature categories are identified largely confirming the existing three categories (roughness, harmonicity, familiarity), including spectral envelope as an additional category separate from these. In Experiment 2, we evaluate the current model of consonance/dissonance by Harrison and Pearce by an analysis of three previously published datasets. We use linear mixed models to optimize the choice of predictors and offer a revised model. We also propose and assess a number of new predictors representing familiarity. In Experiment 3, the model by Harrison and Pearce and our revised model are evaluated with nine datasets that provide empirical mean ratings of consonance and dissonance. The results show good prediction rates for the Harrison and Pearce model (62%) and a still significantly better rate for the revised model (73%). In the revised model, the harmonicity predictor of Harrison and Pearce’s model is replaced by Stolzenburg’s model, and a familiarity predictor coded through a simplified classification of chords replaces the original corpus-based model. The inclusion of spectral envelope as a new category is a minor addition to account for the consonance/dissonance ratings. With respect to the anatomy of consonance/dissonance, we analyze the collinearity of the predictors, which is addressed by principal component analysis of all predictors in Experiment 3. This captures the harmonicity and roughness predictors into one component; overall, the three components account for 66% of the consonance/dissonance ratings, where the dominant variance explained comes from familiarity (46.2%), followed by roughness/harmonicity (19.3%).

Parent-child Engagement and Dissonance in Refugee Families Resettling in Brisbane, Australia

This Australian-based study examined demographic and psychosocial factors associated with refugee parents’ communication with their children. Refugee parents (n = 222) from Ethiopia, Congo, and Myanmar took part in a survey. Logistic hierarchical analysis showed that parents with a higher level of acculturation were more engaged in meaningful and positive communication with their children. Parents’ acculturative stress increased their perception of intergenerational dissonance. Refugee parents’ employment status showed unexpected effects: unemployed parents reported interacting more, and more positively, with their children. Those who were confident in securing a job also interacted meaningfully with their children. Those in the workforce reported that their relationship and communication with children deteriorated.

Consonance, Dissonance, and Formal Proportions in Two Works by Sofia Gubaidulina

Consonance and dissonance are frequently invoked in discussions of Gubaidulina’s music, particularly in terms of the composer’s intentional contrasts between timbres and her golden section-oriented formal planning. In this paper, I use the notion of dissonance to mediate between several competing theories of Gubaidulina’s music and theories of timbre more broadly. Certain passages in her Meditation on the Bach Chorale “Vor deinen Thron tret’ ich hiermit” (1993) are identified as dissonant based on her compositional theories and on sketch material from the Paul Sacher Stiftung, and on further examples drawn from her Am Rande des Abgrunds (2002). Broadly speaking, “dissonant” sounds are closer to white noise than “consonant” sounds, aligning with empirical studies of dissonance perception as well as with spectralist compositional theories. However, Gubaidulina’s music uses this extended notion of dissonance particularly musically; dissonances have specific structural roles in a work and resolve to consonances.

Cognitive dissonance among students in the conditions of online communications of modern educational environment

The subject of this research is the educational environment of a pedagogical university, in the conditions of which the educational process is realized through online communications and characterized by the presence of phenomena of cognitive dissonance within the system of intersubjective relations. The authors views the features and assessments of discomfort of cognitive dissonance impeding students’ inclusion into the educational process. The assessments of cognitive dissonance are analyzed depending on its causes among the students of Bachelor’s and Master’s Degree. Attention is paid to perception of cognitive dissonance by the students as a lack of freedom of choice of the individual communication strategies, which on the subjective level is accompanied by feeling of indifference to the need for fulfilling the set assignments. The main conclusion consists in the thesis that the shift of pedagogical paradigm is accompanied by the phenomena of cognitive dissonance depending on its causes among the Bachelor’s students mostly relate to the absence of interest to online communications, inertness of feedback, and failure to understand the logic of the communication process itself. Among the Master’s Degree students there were no evidence of cognitive dissonance of any critical quantitative values. In quantitative regards, all of these indicators were below average, except such factors as the lack of freedom in selection of individual communication strategies. The scientific novelty consist in identification of the key characteristics and assessments of discomfort of cognitive dissonance impeding students’ inclusion into the educational process of modern educational environment.

To belong or not to belong, that is the question?! Explorative insights on liminal gender states within women’s STEMpreneurship

Scientific discourses about entrepreneurialism have long been dominated by neo-liberal thinking that categorizes it as gender-neutral. The last two decades however have seen entrepreneurship research develop a more nuanced understanding of gender. Taking the recent findings of entrepreneurial belonging (EB) as dynamic and relational as a starting point, this article aims to better understand how women entrepreneurs are affected by the challenges and chances of defining and negotiating the genderedness of EB. The concept of liminality is used as a critical perspective to gain insights on how women entrepreneurs accomplish entrepreneurial belonging in what is considered a predominantly masculine field like STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics). Insights into explorative interviews question the need for a linear or static “fixed” approach of (un)doing gender to foster belonging. More precisely, the data reveal that liminal gender states (LGSs) of EB are linked to the situational perception of dissonance between the subjective ideas of womanhood and a disciplinary as well as entrepreneurial masculine normative frame. And indeed, the data indicate that women STEMpreneurs are continuously triggered by the genderedness of their EB as being a state “betwixt and between” normative frames. One the one hand, they feel challenged by the dissonance of LGSs. On the other hand, the interviews also reveal that this challenge turns into an opportunity in situations where LGSs are strategically used to build upon new entrepreneurial routines and roles that foster a state of uniqueness.

Computational Approach to Musical Consonance and Dissonance.

In sixth century BC, Pythagoras discovered the mathematical foundation of musical consonance and dissonance. When auditory frequencies in small-integer ratios are combined, the result is a harmonious perception. In contrast, most frequency combinations result in audible, off-centered by-products labeled “beating” or “roughness;” these are reported by most listeners to sound dissonant. In this paper, we consider second-order beats, a kind of beating recognized as a product of neural processing, and demonstrate that the data-driven approach of Recurrence Quantification Analysis (RQA) allows for the reconstruction of the order in which interval ratios are ranked in music theory and harmony. We take advantage of computer-generated sounds containing all intervals over the span of an octave. To visualize second-order beats, we use a glissando from the unison to the octave. This procedure produces a profile of recurrence values that correspond to subsequent epochs along the original signal. We find that the higher recurrence peaks exactly match the epochs corresponding to just intonation frequency ratios. This result indicates a link between consonance and the dynamical features of the signal. Our findings integrate a new element into the existing theoretical models of consonance, thus providing a computational account of consonance in terms of dynamical systems theory. Finally, as it considers general features of acoustic signals, the present approach demonstrates a universal aspect of consonance and dissonance perception and provides a simple mathematical tool that could serve as a common framework for further neuro-psychological and music theory research.

FMRI Mapping of Brain Activity Associated with the Vocal Production of Consonant and Dissonant Intervals.

The neural correlates of consonance and dissonance perception have been widely studied, but not the neural correlates of consonance and dissonance production. The most straightforward manner of musical production is singing, but, from an imaging perspective, it still presents more challenges than listening because it involves motor activity. The accurate singing of musical intervals requires integration between auditory feedback processing and vocal motor control in order to correctly produce each note. This protocol presents a method that permits the monitoring of neural activations associated with the vocal production of consonant and dissonant intervals. Four musical intervals, two consonant and two dissonant, are used as stimuli, both for an auditory discrimination test and a task that involves first listening to and then reproducing given intervals. Participants, all female vocal students at the conservatory level, were studied using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) during the performance of the singing task, with the listening task serving as a control condition. In this manner, the activity of both the motor and auditory systems was observed, and a measure of vocal accuracy during the singing task was also obtained. Thus, the protocol can also be used to track activations associated with singing different types of intervals or with singing the required notes more accurately. The results indicate that singing dissonant intervals requires greater participation of the neural mechanisms responsible for the integration of external feedback from the auditory and sensorimotor systems than does singing consonant intervals.