Rapid timing of musical aesthetic judgments.

Abstract

In recent years, psychological models of perception have undergone reevaluation due to a broadening of focus toward understanding not only how observers perceive stimuli but also how they subjectively evaluate stimuli. Here, we investigated the time course of such aesthetic evaluations using a gating paradigm. In a series of experiments, participants heard excerpts of classical, jazz, and electronica music. Excerpts were of different durations (250 ms, 500 ms, 750 ms, 1,000 ms, 2,000 ms, 10,000 ms) or note values (eighth note, quarter note, half note, dotted-half note, whole note, and entire 10,000 ms excerpt). After each excerpt, participants rated how much they liked the excerpt on a 9-point Likert scale. In Experiment 1, listeners made accurate aesthetic judgments within 750 ms for classical and jazz pieces, while electronic pieces were judged within 500 ms. When translated into note values (Experiment 2), electronica and jazz clips were judged more quickly than classical. In Experiment 3, we manipulated the familiarity of the musical excerpts. Unfamiliar clips were judged more quickly (500 ms) than familiar clips (750 ms), but there was overall higher accuracy for familiar pieces. Finally, we investigated listeners' aesthetic judgments continuously over the time course of more naturalistic (60 s) excerpts: Within 3 s, listeners' judgments differed between most- and least-liked pieces. We suggest that such rapid aesthetic judgments represent initial gut-level decisions that are made quickly, but that even these initial judgments are influenced by characteristics such as genre and familiarity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

Musical anhedonia and rewards of music listening: current advances and a proposed model

“…The capacity to perceive, produce, and appreciate music, together termed musicality, has been a growing topic of interest in the past 20 years of cognitive neuroscience. While most cognitive neuroscience studies on musicality focus on music perception and production skills, there has been a recent explosion of interest in the appreciation of music . Multiple research programs in the cognitive neuroscience of music have involved comparing participants with different types and levels of musical training .…”

“…While most cognitive neuroscience studies on musicality focus on music perception and production skills, there has been a recent explosion of interest in the appreciation of music. 2,3 Multiple research programs in the cognitive neuroscience of music have involved comparing participants with different types and levels of musical training. [4][5][6][7] However, to cognitive neuroscientists who are not particularly concerned with music, these studies may appear to be highly specialized and of limited interest as they seem to focus on a special population-highly trained musicians.…”

Continuous ratings of movie watching reveal idiosyncratic dynamics of aesthetic enjoyment

“…There is evidence suggesting that people are able to form stable aesthetic judgments on the basis of very brief exposures: ratings for 500 ms musical excerpts [3] and for 50 ms presentations of scenes [4,5] are highly correlated to ratings for more extended presentations. However, other studies suggest that understanding and appreciation of the objects or events that give rise to aesthetic experiences typically requires more time.…”

The skipping behavior of users of music streaming services and its relation to musical structure

“…Most skipping activity in the context of a commercial music streaming service also occurs in the very first few seconds of listening, thereby suggesting a similar ability of users to very quickly express (negative) aesthetic judgments: preliminary analysis of Skip Profiles [5], averaged on millions of listeners and billions of plays obtained from the commercial streaming service Spotify, identifies a "steep drop off in listeners in the early part of a song, when most listeners are deciding whether or not to skip the song". It must be pointed out that the context of [5] (and of this paper)-the behavior of generic users in unspecified listening contexts-is radically different from the carefully designed and controlled experimental conditions of [4]; nonetheless, the findings of both are in agreement.…”

“…A different line of research literature is concerned with the temporal aspect of user responses to musical stimuli. The object of the experiments presented in [4] is to "identify the amount of time necessary to make accurate aesthetic judgments"; in this study the authors argue that such time is around 750ms. Most skipping activity in the context of a commercial music streaming service also occurs in the very first few seconds of listening, thereby suggesting a similar ability of users to very quickly express (negative) aesthetic judgments: preliminary analysis of Skip Profiles [5], averaged on millions of listeners and billions of plays obtained from the commercial streaming service Spotify, identifies a "steep drop off in listeners in the early part of a song, when most listeners are deciding whether or not to skip the song".…”