Psychology of Music, Ahead of Print. <br/>The purpose of this study was to understand the relationships among self-efficacy, intrinsic motivation, and self-worth of adolescent singers, and how each construct functions in high school choir. The second purpose was to understand the degree to which these constructs predicted singing participation after high school graduation. Participants consisted of 215 high school students enrolled in choir from five public high schools in the United States. The majority of participants reported their self-identified gender as female (61.9%, n = 133), wi ..read more

Psychology of Music, Ahead of Print. <br/>To examine the impact of music as a cross-modal prime on facial emotion recognition ability in autistic children, this study compares the priming effect of music with that of faces as an intramodal prime and nonverbal sounds as the same cross-modal prime. The response time and accuracy of facial emotion recognition (happy and sad) were compared among 21 neurotypical children and 17 autistic children under various priming stimuli. A data analysis revealed that autistic children exhibited worse recognition of facial emotional expressions and demons ..read more

Psychology of Music, Ahead of Print. <br/>Engaging in music practice is often assumed to increase empathy and prosociality. However, data in support of this relationship are limited, leaving unclear which components of empathy (cognitive empathy, emotional contagion, and emotional disconnection) and prosocial behaviors, if any, would be affected. Here, we recruited musicians with more than 2 years of musical experience (n = 80) and nonmusicians (n = 89) to measure empathy (using subjective and objective measures) and prosociality (using economic games). We hypothesized that musicians wou ..read more

Psychology of Music, Ahead of Print. <br/>No two people perceive the same music alike. This may apply especially to polyrhythms, which consist of two or more rhythms with indivisible regular pulses, such as three over four (3:4). Either of these pulses can be perceived as the underlying beat. Previously, we showed that people naturally tap along to pulses that can be subdivided into groups of two or four equally spaced units (i.e., binarized pulses). This propensity for binarized pulses is reduced when the opposite pulse admitting ternary subdivisions is pitched lower. However, individua ..read more

Psychology of Music, Ahead of Print. <br/>Social need fulfillment is imperative to well-being, leading to a strong motivation to ensure that social needs are met. The social surrogacy hypothesis proposes that individuals may use non-human social targets, including television characters, books, or comfort foods, to address social needs. The current work sought to examine the social surrogacy hypothesis in the domain of music. Utilizing both correlational (Study 1) and experimental (Study 2) methodology, the current research suggests that music can provide social benefits in response to so ..read more

Psychology of Music, Ahead of Print. <br/>Music tempo affects listeners’ mental state, especially arousal levels. However, several studies have demonstrated that the effect of music tempo on arousal while listening to music can be modulated by individual differences, such as the pace of mental activity, that is, spontaneous motor tempo (SMT). Thus, SMT is a candidate factor that affects the relationship between music tempo and arousal. Here, we conducted a psychological experiment to investigate how SMT modulates the effect of music tempo on listeners’ arousal levels. First, the particip ..read more

Psychology of Music, Ahead of Print. <br/>The purpose of this study was to conduct a random-effects meta-analysis to measure the overall mean effect of music participation on social and emotional measures in participants across the lifespan. Results showed small to medium overall effects (N = 18,564, k = 56, g = .23, p < .0001, 95% confident interval = [.16, .29]), indicating subjects who participated in music had better scores on social and emotional measures compared with those participating in other activities (such as sports) or no other activities (passive control group). Moderat ..read more

Psychology of Music, Ahead of Print. <br/>Listening modes are often ignored in music perception research, especially when it comes to the supposedly attentive listening situation of a classical concert. The audience members’ various ways of listening, understood as the directedness of activity toward different dimensions of sound, is hypothesized to play a key role in the experience of live music. We assessed listening activity of participants (N = 786) attending a series of experimental live concerts. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) revealed the following five listening modes: emotion ..read more

Psychology of Music, Ahead of Print. <br/>Professional musicians are often confronted with multiple profession-related stressors, which may be associated with an increased risk of mental strain, but empirical evidence focusing on clinical samples of musicians is limited. The aim of this study was to examine clinically confirmed mental disorders and personality accentuations in musicians attending a musician-specific outpatient service, to better understand how occupational and person-related stressors may impact their mental health. We performed a cross-sectional secondary data analysis ..read more

Psychology of Music, Ahead of Print. <br/>Despite many decades of academic interest in music and autism, we know little about what music means to autistic adults and how they experience it. The few existing studies lack a common theoretical basis and are therefore difficult to compare and integrate. To address this gap, we investigated whether Self-Determination Theory can be used as a common framework for understanding the functions of music as experienced by autistic adults. We focused specifically on the support and thwarting of the basic psychological needs (autonomy, competence, and ..read more