Musical Expectations Research Articles

Violations of Musical Expectations and Emotion

This study investigates the possibility of a relationship between types of violations of musical expectations and perceived emotions. A natural consequence of listening to music is the development of musical expectations, or rhythmic, harmonic, and structural anticipations of what the listener expects to hear. Existing research in psychology and neuroscience demonstrates that violation of these musical expectations has significant physiological and emotional effects on the listener. Through a survey format, participants were asked to evaluate their experience listening to twelve excerpts by providing written responses and completing two rating scales. This allowed for a qualitative and quantitative evaluation of emotion in contrast to physiological measures used in other studies. Nonparametric tests showed statistically significant differences between ranked mean ratings according to type of violation. Thus, this study provides evidence supporting the existence of a relationship between types of violations of musical expectation and perceived emotions in listeners. Further research is suggested for clarification of this relationship and its possible applications in musical compositions.

Decoding predicted musical notes from omitted stimulus potentials

Electrophysiological studies have investigated predictive processing in music by examining event-related potentials (ERPs) elicited by the violation of musical expectations. While several studies have reported that the predictability of stimuli can modulate the amplitude of ERPs, it is unclear how specific the representation of the expected note is. The present study addressed this issue by recording the omitted stimulus potentials (OSPs) to avoid contamination of bottom-up sensory processing with top-down predictive processing. Decoding of the omitted content was attempted using a support vector machine, which is a type of machine learning. ERP responses to the omission of four target notes (E, F, A, and C) at the same position in familiar and unfamiliar melodies were recorded from 25 participants. The results showed that the omission N1 were larger in the familiar melody condition than in the unfamiliar melody condition. The decoding accuracy of the four omitted notes was significantly higher in the familiar melody condition than in the unfamiliar melody condition. These results suggest that the OSPs contain discriminable predictive information, and the higher the predictability, the more the specific representation of the expected note is generated.

Musical tension is affected by metrical structure dynamically and hierarchically.

As the basis of musical emotions, dynamic tension experience is felt by listeners as music unfolds over time. The effects of musical harmonic and melodic structures on tension have been widely investigated, however, the potential roles of metrical structures in tension perception remain largely unexplored. This experiment examined how different metrical structures affect tension experience and explored the underlying neural activities. The electroencephalogram (EEG) was recorded and subjective tension was rated simultaneously while participants listened to music meter sequences. On large time scale of whole meter sequences, it was found that different overall tension and low-frequency (1 ~ 4Hz) steady-state evoked potentials were elicited by metrical structures with different periods of strong beats, and the higher overall tension was associated with metrical structure with the shorter intervals between strong beats. On small time scale of measures, dynamic tension fluctuations within measures was found to be associated with the periodic modulations of high-frequency (10 ~ 25Hz) neural activities. The comparisons between the same beats within measures and across different meters both on small and large time scales verified the contextual effects of meter on tension induced by beats. Our findings suggest that the overall tension is determined by temporal intervals between strong beats, and the dynamic tension experience may arise from cognitive processing of hierarchical temporal expectation and attention, which are discussed under the theoretical frameworks of metrical hierarchy, musical expectation and dynamic attention.

Music Psychology and its Integration in Middle School Music Education in China

This study provides insight into the importance of music psychology in music education. First, it emphasizes the key role that music psychology plays in improving students' musical literacy and skills, treating it as an indispensable component of music education. Secondly, the article points out that short-duration music videos have a significant impact on adolescents’ learning attention, highlighting the urgency of integrating music psychology into teaching. In addition, the article deeply discusses the close relationship between music and psychology, which is crucial for improving the quality of music teaching and deeply understanding the psychological process of music learning. Through an in-depth analysis of the role of musical emotion-inducing mechanisms in cognition and emotion, the article particularly emphasizes the impact of musical expectations on emotional responses. Finally, this article once again emphasizes the key role of music psychology in music education, which helps to improve students' musical literacy, deeply understand the psychological process of music learning, and improve the overall quality of music teaching.

Neural encoding of musical expectations in a non-human primate

The appreciation of music is a universal trait of humankind.1,2,3 Evidence supporting this notion includes the ubiquity of music across cultures4,5,6,7 and the natural predisposition toward music that humans display early in development.8,9,10 Are we musical animals because of species-specific predispositions? This question cannot be answered by relying on cross-cultural or developmental studies alone, as these cannot rule out enculturation.11 Instead, it calls for cross-species experiments testing whether homologous neural mechanisms underlying music perception are present in non-human primates. We present music to two rhesus monkeys, reared without musical exposure, while recording electroencephalography (EEG) and pupillometry. Monkeys exhibit higher engagement and neural encoding of expectations based on the previously seeded musical context when passively listening to real music as opposed to shuffled controls. We then compare human and monkey neural responses to the same stimuli and find a species-dependent contribution of two fundamental musical features-pitch and timing12-in generating expectations: while timing- and pitch-based expectations13 are similarly weighted in humans, monkeys rely on timing rather than pitch. Together, these results shed light on the phylogeny of music perception. They highlight monkeys' capacity for processing temporal structures beyond plain acoustic processing, and they identify a species-dependent contribution of time- and pitch-related features to the neural encoding of musical expectations.

Cognitive and sensory expectations independently shape musical expectancy and pleasure.

Expectation is crucial for our enjoyment of music, yet the underlying generative mechanisms remain unclear. While sensory models derive predictions based on local acoustic information in the auditory signal, cognitive models assume abstract knowledge of music structure acquired over the long term. To evaluate these two contrasting mechanisms, we compared simulations from four computational models of musical expectancy against subjective expectancy and pleasantness ratings of over 1000 chords sampled from 739 US Billboard pop songs. Bayesian model comparison revealed that listeners' expectancy and pleasantness ratings were predicted by the independent, non-overlapping, contributions of cognitive and sensory expectations. Furthermore, cognitive expectations explained over twice the variance in listeners' perceived surprise compared to sensory expectations, suggesting a larger relative importance of long-term representations of music structure over short-term sensory-acoustic information in musical expectancy. Our results thus emphasize the distinct, albeit complementary, roles of cognitive and sensory expectations in shaping musical pleasure, and suggest that this expectancy-driven mechanism depends on musical information represented at different levels of abstraction along the neural hierarchy. This article is part of the theme issue 'Art, aesthetics and predictive processing: theoretical and empirical perspectives'.

Auditory and reward structures reflect the pleasure of musical expectancies during naturalistic listening

Enjoying music consistently engages key structures of the neural auditory and reward systems such as the right superior temporal gyrus (R STG) and ventral striatum (VS). Expectations seem to play a central role in this effect, as preferences reliably vary according to listeners’ uncertainty about the musical future and surprise about the musical past. Accordingly, VS activity reflects the pleasure of musical surprise, and exhibits stronger correlations with R STG activity as pleasure grows. Yet the reward value of musical surprise – and thus the reason for these surprises engaging the reward system – remains an open question. Recent models of predictive neural processing and learning suggest that forming, testing, and updating hypotheses about one’s environment may be intrinsically rewarding, and that the constantly evolving structure of musical patterns could provide ample opportunity for this procedure. Consistent with these accounts, our group previously found that listeners tend to prefer melodic excerpts taken from real music when it either validates their uncertain melodic predictions (i.e., is high in uncertainty and low in surprise) or when it challenges their highly confident ones (i.e., is low in uncertainty and high in surprise). An independent research group (Cheung et al., 2019) replicated these results with musical chord sequences, and identified their fMRI correlates in the STG, amygdala, and hippocampus but not the VS, raising new questions about the neural mechanisms of musical pleasure that the present study seeks to address. Here, we assessed concurrent liking ratings and hemodynamic fMRI signals as 24 participants listened to 50 naturalistic, real-world musical excerpts that varied across wide spectra of computationally modeled uncertainty and surprise. As in previous studies, liking ratings exhibited an interaction between uncertainty and surprise, with the strongest preferences for high uncertainty/low surprise and low uncertainty/high surprise. FMRI results also replicated previous findings, with music liking effects in the R STG and VS. Furthermore, we identify interactions between uncertainty and surprise on the one hand, and liking and surprise on the other, in VS activity. Altogether, these results provide important support for the hypothesized role of the VS in deriving pleasure from learning about musical structure.

Modeling musical expectancy via reinforcement learning and directed graphs

Modeling musical expectancy via reinforcement learning and directed graphs

Cross-Modal Musical Expectancy in Complex Sound Music: A Grounded Theory.

Expectancy is a core mechanism for constructing affective and cognitive experiences of music. However, research on musical expectations has been largely founded upon the perception of tonal music. Therefore, it is still to be determined how this mechanism explains the cognition of sound-based acoustic and electroacoustic music, such as complex sound music (CSM). Additionally, the dominant methodologies have consisted of well-controlled experimental designs with low ecological validity that have overlooked the listening experience as described by the listeners. This paper presents results concerning musical expectancy from a qualitative research project that investigated the listening experiences of 15 participants accustomed to CSM listening. Corbin and Strauss' (2015) grounded theory was used to triangulate data from interviews along with musical analyses of the pieces chosen by the participants to describe their listening experiences. Cross-modal musical expectancy (CMME) emerged from the data as a subcategory that explained prediction through the interaction of multimodal elements beyond just the acoustic properties of music. The results led to hypothesise that multimodal information coming from sounds, performance gestures, and indexical, iconic, and conceptual associations re-enact cross-modal schemata and episodic memories where real and imagined sounds, objects, actions, and narratives interrelate to give rise to CMME processes. This construct emphasises the effect of CSM's subversive acoustic features and performance practices on the listening experience. Further, it reveals the multiplicity of factors involved in musical expectancy, such as cultural values, subjective musical and non-musical experiences, music structure, listening situation, and psychological mechanisms. Following these ideas, CMME is conceived as a grounded cognition process.

Pentecostal Pedagogy and Musical Engagement: A Narrative Portrait

Abstract This narrative portrait of Michelle, a Bahamian elementary music teacher working in the southeastern United States, illustrates how Emdin's (2016) Pentecostal pedagogy might apply to music education. An element of Emdin's broader reality pedagogy, Pentecostal pedagogy emphasizes ways in which a teacher engages students in educational content by connecting with them emotionally, balancing structure and improvisation, utilizing knowledge about students’ backgrounds and interests to present material in meaningful ways, and fostering a sense of community. We chose narrative portraiture (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000; Lawrence-Lightfoot & Davis, 1997) as a means to illustrate the vibrancy, flexibility, and holistic embodiment evident in Michelle's classroom. The research process was generative and iterative, with attention to elements of portraiture including context, voice, relationship, emergent themes, and the aesthetic whole. The portrait illustrates ways that Michelle exemplified tenets of Pentecostal pedagogy, including offering expressions of love juxtaposed with fierce musical expectations; using a variety of voice inflections and facial expressions to maintain student attention; emphasizing context; creating community; sequencing material to facilitate student openness to unfamiliar concepts; using call and response to assess and energize students; balancing structure and improvisation; and teaching for musical, intellectual, physical, and emotional transformation. This portrait depicts nuanced differences between merely teaching students “their” music within a traditional, Eurocentric pedagogy versus teaching a broad variety of genres with an engaging approach. Findings pave the way for broader discussions about how teachers from a variety of backgrounds might work with a variety of students.

Emotions and Psychological Mechanisms of Listening to Music in Cochlear Implant Recipients.

Music is a multidimensional phenomenon and is classified by its arousal properties, emotional quality, and structural characteristics. Although structural features of music (i.e., pitch, timbre, and tempo) and music emotion recognition in cochlear implant (CI) recipients are popular research topics, music-evoked emotions, and related psychological mechanisms that reflect both the individual and social context of music are largely ignored. Understanding the music-evoked emotions (the "what") and related mechanisms (the "why") can help professionals and CI recipients better comprehend the impact of music on CI recipients' daily lives. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to evaluate these aspects in CI recipients and compare their findings to those of normal hearing (NH) controls. This study included 50 CI recipients with diverse auditory experiences who were prelingually deafened (deafened at or before 6 years of age)-early implanted (N = 21), prelingually deafened-late implanted (implanted at or after 12 years of age-N = 13), and postlingually deafened (N = 16) as well as 50 age-matched NH controls. All participants completed the same survey, which included 28 emotions and 10 mechanisms (Brainstem reflex, Rhythmic entrainment, Evaluative Conditioning, Contagion, Visual imagery, Episodic memory, Musical expectancy, Aesthetic judgment, Cognitive appraisal, and Lyrics). Data were presented in detail for CI groups and compared between CI groups and between CI and NH groups. The principal component analysis showed five emotion factors that are explained by 63.4% of the total variance, including anxiety and anger, happiness and pride, sadness and pain, sympathy and tenderness, and serenity and satisfaction in the CI group. Positive emotions such as happiness, tranquility, love, joy, and trust ranked as most often experienced in all groups, whereas negative and complex emotions such as guilt, fear, anger, and anxiety ranked lowest. The CI group ranked lyrics and rhythmic entrainment highest in the emotion mechanism, and there was a statistically significant group difference in the episodic memory mechanism, in which the prelingually deafened, early implanted group scored the lowest. Our findings indicate that music can evoke similar emotions in CI recipients with diverse auditory experiences as it does in NH individuals. However, prelingually deafened and early implanted individuals lack autobiographical memories associated with music, which affects the feelings evoked by music. In addition, the preference for rhythmic entrainment and lyrics as mechanisms of music-elicited emotions suggests that rehabilitation programs should pay particular attention to these cues.

Characterizing musical vulnerability: Toward a typology of receptivity and susceptibility in the secondary music classroom

Although teachers and researchers frequently acknowledge that music education can benefit pupils’ academic achievement, health and well-being, and social development, classroom music-making can have long-lasting, detrimental impacts. Individuals’ experiences of failure, disappointment, and exclusion in the music classroom highlight an urgent need for music education to be reframed by an understanding of “musical vulnerability”: individuals’ inherent and situational openness to being affected—positively or negatively—by the semantic and somatic properties of music-making. Drawing on existing vulnerability studies, I evaluate how classroom music-making can foster both positive receptivity and negative susceptibility, depending on its delineation of identity and physical embodiment. I then present reductive analyses of phenomenologically-informed interviews in which 12 secondary music teachers described their past experiences of being pupils, and their present experiences of teaching pupils, in music classrooms in the United Kingdom. Using excerpts from their observations of teaching pupils, I describe how interactions between individuals’ interpersonal and personal vulnerabilities—including personality, musical, and neurological differences—affected occasions of musical receptivity and susceptibility. As individuals negotiated conflicting musical expectations, they sometimes fostered fruitful resilience but sometimes encountered profound resignation. I draw on these findings to construct a preliminary typology of musical vulnerability and emphasize the need for future research into proactive differentiation in the music classroom.

Commentary on "A Computational Approach to the Detection and Prediction of (Ir)Regularity in Children's Folk Songs"

This commentary on "A Computational Approach to the Detection and Prediction of (Ir)Regularity in Children's Folk Songs" by Mihelač, Povoh, and Wiggins reflects on the use of methods of (statistical) expectation to analyze musical structure and regularity, including potential biases of such methods, and provides some perspectives on leveraging information theoretic models of musical expectation to design cognitively plausible computational listeners of music.

Articulating Urban Culture with Coach Horns in the Long Nineteenth Century

Postal horns have been associated traditionally with bucolic topics in music. From Mozart to Mahler, the instrument appears in orchestral textures and songs to signify nostalgia for preindustrial rural life. The history of the coach horn, originally the standard postal instrument used on the British Royal Mail fleets, branched unexpectedly away from this paradigm when it was adopted for recreational use by socialites in urban areas in England, France, and other metropolitan hubs during the second half of the nineteenth century. In addition to performing the traditional road signals, driving enthusiasts expanded the musical vocabulary of the coach horn to include elaborate fanfares and stylized ensemble music. Tracing the undocumented recreational history of the coach horn, this article interrogates coach horn manuals, compositions, and essays on coaching that overturn traditional assumptions about the instrument. These sources illustrate how coach horn signals helped reframe driving from a service activity to a healthful sport. Examining the rhetoric surrounding the coach horn during the period of its revival, this study shows how the new signals reflected promenade and salon culture by mimicking polite dialogue. The ensemble repertory written for coach horns also catered to urban popular taste and was cultivated to enhance metropolitan social events. Analysis further illustrates how revivalist fanfares aurally articulated social status in the outdoor urban arena. This case study ultimately traces the cultural evolution of an instrument, a complex process through which old and new musical expectations were negotiated through composition and practice.

Musical Probability and the Music of Claude Debussy. Expectancy and Information in (…Bruyères) and the String Quartet

This article explores the relationship between musical expectancy and information through the use of both hidden Markov models, Bayesian probability and their application to Claude Debussy’s Prélude (…Bruyères) and his string quartet. (…Bruyères), which is one of the most conservative of the Préludes, is an interesting example of the composer’s use of “vagrant” sonorities which persist despite a perceived tonal hierarchy. An analysis of the varying levels of information, determined by the levels of expectancy which arise throughout the composition, illustrates an aspect of analysis which has not yet been applied to Debussy’s music. A study of musical information will inevitably lead to the study of probabilty, as a greater degree of information is expressed by events which could be considered to be less probable. Much of the research that has been done thus far in musical probability has used as a priori a collection of stylistic precepts, which are referred to as likely events. This article, however, attempts to determine probabilistic events based on “intra-opus” events by using David Temperley’s Bayesian approach to determine likely events within a composition. These are classified as events within a hidden Markov model, which examines the interrelationships of variables, some of which are perceived and some which are simply implied. A statistical “extra-opus” methodology is employed and compared to the Bayesian style. In the seond part of the article, melodic probability in a polyphonic context is discussed by examining the several sections from Debussy’s string quartet. The probabalistic fluctuations between voices in the quartet are then compared to the single melody of (…Bruyères).

Jakob Adlung’s ‘Anweisung zum Fantasiren’ (c.1725–7): edition, translation and introduction

Abstract Jakob Adlung’s recently rediscovered manuscript treatise, ‘Anweisung zum Fantasiren’ (‘Instruction in improvisation’, c.1725–7), proves definitively that some 18th-century musicians understood improvisation modularly in terms of stock voice-leading patterns, or schemas. The manuscript is a compendium containing 28 typical voice-leading patterns that are to be memorized, varied and combined in myriad ways. Adlung’s treatise is thus of particular value, not only because of its numerous musical examples and extensive textual commentary, but because it reveals some of the musical and social expectations of the average central German church organist in the early 18th century. This article offers an introduction to the treatise in the context of Adlung’s biography, with an online appendix containing a critical edition of the treatise and an English translation.

‘Seeing’ music from manga: visualizing music with embodied mechanisms of musical experience

This study investigates how music is represented in musical-themed manga by visual components referred to as ‘visualized music’, and how embodied mechanisms of musical experience conceive these visual manifestations. Using Šorm and Steen’s (2018) Visual Metaphor Identification Procedure (VISMIP), the authors discovered four metaphors, and seven metonymies and ‘manpu’ (i.e. iconic signs used in manga) that are widely applied in visualizing music. In addition, they incorporated Juslin and Västfjäll’s (2008) framework and further proposed five major embodied mechanisms of musical experience: (1) brain stem reflex, (2) emotional contagion, (3) visual imagery, (4) emotional memory related to music, and (5) musical expectancy. Their results showed that these embodied mechanisms are the foundations of visualized music. The brain stem reflex, the underlying structure of most metonymies and manpu, triggers us to represent some acoustic characteristics by using sound symbolic components. These include emotional contagion-inducing metaphors representing emotional responses, such as ‘ MUSIC/EMOTION IS WEATHER’, which further entails their acoustic characteristics and visual imagery, the most important mechanism, basing our overall comprehension of music and metaphorical mapping between music and image-schemata. Readers also use emotional simulations to understand the visual imagery that further constructs their impressions toward music, emotional memory grounding manifestations related to music used to build background stories and intensify reader empathy, and lastly, musical expectancy, involving the ability of prediction and consciousness, usually associated with ‘ MUSIC IS LIGHT’. In this way, this study sheds light on our overall understanding of audio-visual cross-modality, musical experience, metaphor and embodied experience.

Measuring emotional music experience: Spreading activation and BRECVEMA mechanisms

Spreading activation in the cognitive network explains why music is experienced as familiar or likable. It might also be a premise for the emotion-inducing mechanisms of the BRECVEMA framework (Brain stem reflexes, Rhythmic entrainment, Evaluative conditioning, Contagion, Visual imagery, Episodic memory, Musical expectancy, Aesthetic judgment). Both perspectives constitute important aspects of music experience and are influenced by individual differences. In two studies ( n = 125 and n = 153), potential indicators for spreading activation and BRECVEMA mechanisms for single instances of music listening were assessed with a new questionnaire. The results indicated that Typicality of music, Liking, and attentional Engagement underlie spreading activation. The mechanisms Evaluative conditioning and Contagion in unison (Conditioning/Contagion), as well as Visual imagery and Episodic memory could be reliably assessed. Findings revealed that (a) Engagement, Conditioning/Contagion, and Visual imagery increased with musical expertise; (b) spreading activation and mechanisms were stronger when listening to self- rather than pre-selected music; (c) sad music evoked stronger Engagement, Conditioning/Contagion, and Episodic memory when it was self-selected; (d) spreading activation and mechanisms were associated with music empathizing and systemizing and the emotion regulation strategy reappraisal; and finally, (e) regulating sadness with sad music was associated with habitual suppression and stronger Conditioning/Contagion.

The effects of emotionally congruent sad music listening in young adults high in rumination

There is debate as to whether sad music is harmful or helpful when used to regulate emotions. Listeners’ trait level of rumination may influence their responses to sad music during sadness. This study used an online community sample of young adults ( N = 386, 56% female, Mage = 21.89) in an induced sad state to understand the roles of listener rumination and the eight BRECVEMA musical emotion mechanisms (Brain Stem Reflex, Rhythmic Entrainment, Evaluative Conditioning, Contagion, Visual Imagery, Episodic Memory, Musical Expectancy, and Aesthetic Judgment) in determining changes in sadness during listening. Participants increased in sadness after listening to a self-nominated sad song. The increase in sadness observed was additionally moderated by rumination such that higher rumination predicted greater increases in sadness. People high in rumination were additionally more likely to experience musical entrainment, select a song with conditioned responses and associated memories, as well as experience emotional contagion while listening. Importantly, the effect of rumination was not significant when these BRECVEMA variables were added to the model. Results suggested that BRECVEMA mechanisms were more predictive of increases in sadness from pre- to post-listening than trait rumination levels. The findings suggest that attention should be given to individuals’ song choices and associated active BRECVEMA mechanisms in addition to their trait rumination.

Emotional Reactions to Music in Dementia Patients and Healthy Controls: Differential Responding Depends on the Mechanism

Music is frequently regarded as a unique way to connect with dementia patients. Yet little is known about how persons with dementia respond emotionally to music. Are their responses different from those of healthy listeners? If so, why? The present study makes a first attempt to tackle these issues in a Portuguese context, with a focus on psychological mechanisms. In Experiment 1, featuring 20 young and healthy adults, we found that musical excerpts which have previously been shown to activate specific emotion induction mechanisms (brain stem reflex, contagion, episodic memory, musical expectancy) in Sweden were valid and yielded predicted emotions also in Portugal, as indexed by self-reported feelings, psychophysiology, and post hoc mechanism indices. In Experiment 2, we used the same stimuli to compare the responses of 20 elderly listeners diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) with those of 20 healthy listeners. We controlled for cognitive functioning (Mini-Mental State Examination) and depression (Geriatric Depression Scale). Our predictions about how mechanisms would be differentially affected by decline in brain regions associated with AD received support in that AD patients reported significantly lower levels of (a) sadness in the contagion condition, (b) happiness and nostalgia in the episodic memory condition, and (c) anxiety in the musical expectancy condition. By contrast, no significant difference in reported surprise was found in the brain stem reflex condition. Implications for musical interventions aimed at dementia are discussed, highlighting the key role that basic research may play in developing applications.