Emotion in Motion: Investigating the Time-Course of Emotional Judgments of Musical Stimuli

Abstract

MUSIC ELICITS PROFOUND EMOTIONS; HOWEVER, THE time-course of these emotional responses during listening sessions is unclear. We investigated the length of time required for participants to initiate emotional responses ("integration time") to 138 musical samples from a variety of genres by monitoring their real-time continuous ratings of emotional content and arousal level of the musical excerpts (made using a joystick). On average, participants required 8.31 s (SEM = 0.10) of music before initiating emotional judgments. Additionally, we found that: 1) integration time depended on familiarity of songs; 2) soul/funk, jazz, and classical genres were more quickly assessed than other genres; and 3) musicians did not differ significantly in their responses from those with minimal instrumental musical experience. Results were partially explained by the tempo of musical stimuli and suggest that decisions regarding musical structure, as well as prior knowledge and musical preference, are involved in the emotional response to music.

Improving music emotion labeling using human computation

“…We infer that most players are unable to instantaneously judge the mood of a clip at its onset. This is consistent with other research by Bachorik, which concluded that most music listeners require about 8 seconds to judge the mood of a song [9].…”

Liking and identifying emotionally expressive music: Age and gender differences

“…Although formal training in music is unlikely to matter much (Adachi et al, 2004;Bachorik et al, 2009;Bigand, Vieillard, Madurell, Marozeau, & Dacquet, 2006), listening experience would likely play a role, with accuracy improving with increased exposure to music. The association between accuracy and liking suggests that greater exposure during childhood may lead to more adult-like preferences, at least until early adolescence.…”

Activity Analysis and Coordination in Continuous Responses to Music

“…Schubert (2013) describes the time interval during which the accuracy of a participant's rating of a musical stimulus are confounded by the time needed to orient to the music and the mechanics of the rating interface, called the initial orientation time. Another study described this period on a similar interface as the integration time, reporting an average of 8.3 s before participants' ratings settled in a region of the rating range (Bachorik et al, 2009). Some of the largest rating changes can occur in this interval, and this is expected to compromise average rating time series.…”