This study explored the learning habits of string players in a professional symphony orchestra, how they practise, what influences their practice, and how it interacts with rehearsal. For this, four research questions were investigated: () how complementary are rehearsal and practice to the learning of orchestral music? (u) how is the practice of orchestral players approached in terms of methods, regularity, content and structure? (ii) how do such factors as conductor, musical preference, and loss of individuality affect motivation to practise? and (v) what are the strategies that conductors use to influence musicians' commitment to practise? A triangular methodological strategy was undertaken, comprising semi-structured interviews, questionnaire, observation, and case studies. These were preceded by a semantic field research exercise aiming at eliciting the vocabulary participants used in reference to the phenomena investigated. Forty South-American musicians completed a comprehensive mixed-format questionnaire; fifteen musicians and five conductors were interviewed at length; and Twenty-five rehearsals/concerts were observed. Finally, three case studies described musicians' learning processes for a contemporary composition and two traditional pieces of the symphonic repertoire. Results indicated that rehearsal and practice were highly complementary aspects of orchestral learning. In terms of practice habits, players displayed a large range of physical and mental techniques to solve musical problems swiftly, as well as considerable metacognitive capacity. Their practice processes included more general aspects such as planning, evaluation, setting up goals, and priorities; and specific strategies such as listening to and playing with records, speed alteration, use of the metronome, as well as relaxation exercises with and without the instrument. There was also a concern with balancing the practice of technical exercises, studies, solo and orchestral repertoire. However, motivation to learn was found to be affected by the conductor, repertoire and general working ethos, in that order of importance. Conductors were aware of their role as a motivational force behind players' practice, but assumed varying levels of responsibility for this. Implications for current and future research on practice and expertise, and for instrumental music teaching and learning were addressed.

<p> Autism Spectrum Disorder is a Pervasive Developmental Disorder characterized by deficits in three main areas: social interaction, communication, and an intense resistance to change which could include repetitive, self-stimulatory behaviors according to the American Psychiatric Association (2000). The National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (2012) defines a receptive language disorder as exhibited by an inability to understand the words of others, difficulties enacting verbal directives, and deficits in thought organization. These deficits can cause individuals to have difficulties while participating in school, home, and social situations, and may lead to problem behaviors. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (2012) has linked receptive language disorders with other disabilities including Autism Spectrum Disorder (Hoch, 2012). Because this is a largely unexplored area, research is needed to find and support therapeutic techniques addressing deficits in receptive language. </p><p> Three young adult males between the ages of 14 and 22 with a primary diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder were recruited by flyer and word-of-mouth from Northern Colorado. This study employed a multiple baseline across participants with repeated measures design. There were a total of 6 experimental observations with each research subject. Behavioral coding was utilized to determine if there were any mean time differences between the sung and verbal directive conditions. </p><p> Because data was coded separately by the researcher and research assistant, Pearson's r was used to test inter-rater correlation through Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) software (IBM Corporation, 2012). Pearson's <i> r</i> = + 0.997 signifying a positive correlation between the two coders. A Repeated Measures of Analysis of Variance was applied using SAS software to test for statistical significance between the verbal and sung conditions (SAS Institutue Inc., 2011). The RM ANOVA yielded no statistically significant results. However the <i>p</i> value of the statistic, <i>p </i> = 0.0769, was very close to the p value set for the present study, <i> p</i> &lt; 0.05. A power analysis revealed that if an average of 10.2 seconds with a standard deviation of 6.8 seconds remained constant after recruiting a total of 7 volunteer participants, then statistical significance could be reached. Even though statistical significance was not reached, trends in the data were discussed. </p><p> Overall there was a decrease in time between the verbal and sung conditions for each participant. However, this trend was not clear and variability was seen among the participants throughout the sung observations after separating and plotting the data on bar and line graphs. Future researchers should increase the sample size and eliminate inherent study design flaws to thoroughly test if there is a difference between the verbal and sung directives.</p>

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Counseling and Educational Psychology, 2007. / Title from dissertation home page (viewed Sept. 26, 2008). Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 69-02, Section: B, page: 1329. Adviser: Thomas L. Sexton.

Dissertation (PhD) Florida State University, 2006. / Advisor: Jayne M. Standley, Florida State University, College of Music. Title and description from dissertation home page (viewed 6-29-07). Document formatted into pages; contains 241 pages. Includes biographical sketch. Includes bibliographical references.

No description available.

The study falls into two parts, the investigation of what is meant by musical appreciation' and the investigation of the personality traits that characterise the musical appreciative. A review of the literature reveals that there is no agreement as to what music appreciation is. A practical investigation using a specially constructed questionnaire, in which 33 musicians were asked to indicate what they conceived music appreciation to be, confirmed the lack of concensus evident in the literature. To investigate the several aspects of music appreciation, the results of 200 secondary school pupils on a series of music tests and on a questionnaire concerning musical interests and experience were factor analysed. The same music variables were analysed using different techniques and the results of the different agree well. Twelve factors were identified. While no one factor stood out olearly from the others as a 'music appreciation faotor', eleven of the factors can loosely be described as relating to musio appreciation. These factors can be classified under three headings, factors of test ability, factors of performance on an instrument and factors of musical taste. (The twelfth factor concerns how musical the home background is.) The 'taste factors' are considered to be particularly valid, and they are confirmed by an independent study using a semantic differential technique with the same subjects. To investigate the personality struoture of the musically appreciative, one approach was to correlate the school pupils' personality test results (trom Eysenck's J.E.P.I. and Cattell's H.S.P.Q.) with measures from a number of musical variables, which were chosen because of their intrinsic importance and because they represented the 'appreciation' factors produced in the factor anaqses. A second approach, which yielded results consonant with the first, made use of the results of E.P.I. and 16P.F. from more than 200 musicians and music students. Without doubt, 'intelligence' is the trait that most characterises the musical. However, the musically appreciative are also sensitive and emotional. It ia suggested that their emotionality reveals itself as the driving force for any one of many different musical interests or pursuits. What characterises the musical person is the (musical) end to which this drive is directed. Why this drive is directed into musicality may be the result of other personality traits and of home background. Home background is found to be a more important influence on music appreciation than personality, though the two are not independent: those with a musical personality tend to come from musical homes. The magnitude of the relationships between personality and music appreciation and between home background and music appreciation were determined by multiple regression analyses and, disappointingly, are found to be rather slight. The personality characteristics of musically appreciative school pupils are not entirely the same as for musicians and music students. The differences are in line with published findings relating personality variables with the academic achievement of pupils/students at different levels of education. With both the school pupils and the adult musicians, some regularly occurring variations from the basic appreciative personality profile are recorded; e.g. different personality structures are associated with different tastes in music; brass players are more extrover; men musicians are more tough-minded and shrewd than women. The variations are sufficiently great to accommodate a great variety of personalities among the musically appreciative • A number of test instruments were devised for the study. Apart from the questionnaires and the semantic differential, already referred to, a test of ability to discriminate oomposers by their style was developed. This test is promising because 1t appears to measure rather different skills from those measured by other tests, because it is possibly the first genuinely objective test in music in which judgements about musical extracts must be made, and because it is popular with teachers. Although the test does not yet reach the technical standard required of tests, further research and development on it are considered well worth while and are planned.

Absolute Pitch (AP) is the ability to identify a musical note without the use of an external reference. The literature focusses on the accuracy of AP possessors and not on reaction times (RTs) in identifying musical notes. Investigating RT differences between observers with and without AP will further our understanding of the processes involved in AP. This thesis aimed to investigate the RTs of AP possessors and provide a new account of the cognitive mechanisms involved in AP. Three studies were conducted. The first was a tone identification study which was designed to identify RT profiles for AP possessors in comparison to non-AP possessors (NAP possessors).This study was designed to show that AP possessors were quicker and more accurate than NAP possessors in tone identification and that they identified each note of a chromatic scale with varying degrees of difficulty. The RT profile indicates that some notes are identified quicker than others and a relative process was used to identify some notes. The second was an interval identification study which was designed to identify the strategy used by AP possessors in interval identification to identify if an AP or RP strategy was used. The results showed intervals were identified with a similar RT profile to tones indicating a relative process used for both notes and interval identification. The data from these two studies was used to construct the first formal model of absolute pitch (the Multiple Reference Pitch Model) which provides an explanation of AP using three reference points and a relative strategy. The third study aimed to test this model by inducing anchors into participants and developing a sense of relative judgment. Further directions and limitations are discussed in the final chapter. These include the use of a case study design with only three participants and further applications of the model in other domains in Psychology.

The relationship between pitch-interval (precise intervals between notes) and contour (sequence of ups and downs) in melody processing was considered in eight experiments. Each experiment consisted of subjects listening to a number of melody pairs, the second in each pair serving as a comparison to the first. Depending upon the condition, subjects were required to attend to the pitch-interval or contour relationships in the first melody and to detect an alteration in that relationship in the comparison melody. A reaction time measure served as the dependent variable. The methodology was tested in Experiment 1. Experiments 2, 3 and 4 showed the relative salience of pitch-interval and contour to be a function of both melody length and serial position. Contour was found to be more salient for short melodies and at the beginnings of melodies, whereas pitch-interval was more salient for longer melodies and for later serial positions. In these experiments, the melodies heard were novel and their comparisons transposed. The results were interpreted in terms of the listeners' need to establish a tonal centre for the encoding of pitch- interval information which may not be necessary for the encoding of contour information. Until a tonal centre can be established contour is the more salient aspect of a melody. Pitch-interval and contour might therefore be of differing importance depending upon the current availability of a tonal centre during melody processing. Experiment 5 investigated the effect of alteration size and no significant effects were found. Experiment 6 showed that when transposition effects are controlled for such that the comparison melodies were heard in the same key as the first melody, the pitch-interval relationships were more salient than the contour relationships but contour was still available to the listener. Experiment 7 showed pitch-interval to be more salient them contour when melodies were familiar. Thus both Experiments 6 and 7 show pitch-interval to be more important when a tonal centre is more readily available to the listener. Contour is still available, but less essential under these conditions. Experiment 8 showed pitch-interval but not contour to be affected by key-distance, again showing pitch-interval encoding to be dependent upon a tonal centre which is not necessary for contour. The experiments thus show contour always to be available but to be more or less important depending upon the availability of pitch-interval information which is in turn dependent upon the availability of a tonal centre. The relationship between pitch-interval and contour thus changes according to the salience of a tonal centre. Any condition which serves to make a tonal centre more available (particularly non-transposition or familiarity) also makes pitch-interval more available. Contour is independent of a tonal centre and thus becomes more important in the total percept when tonality is confusing or unpredictable. This has implications for both the understanding of the cognitive processing of melodies and for the understanding of the role of contour in music itself.

No description available.

Understanding speech in background noise is a complex and challenging task that causes difficulty for many people, including young children and older adults. Musicians, on the other hand, appear to have an enhanced ability to perceive speech in noise. This has prompted suggestions that musical training could help people who struggle to communicate in complex auditory environments. The experiments presented in this thesis were designed to investigate if and how musical training could be used as an intervention for improving speech perception in noise. The aim of Experiment 1 was to identify specific musical skills which could be targeted for training. Musical beat perception was found to be strongly correlated with speech perception in noise. It was hypothesised that musical beat perception might enhance speech perception in noise by facilitating temporal orienting of attention to important parts of the signal. Experiments 2, 3 and 4 investigated this hypothesis using a rhythmic priming paradigm. Musical rhythm sequences were used to prime temporal expectations, with performance for on-beat targets predicted to be better than that for temporally displaced targets. Rhythmic priming benefits were observed for detection of pure-tone targets in noise and for identification of words in noise. For more complex rhythms, the priming effect was correlated with musical beat perception. Experiment 5 used the metric structure within a sentence context to prime temporal expectations for a target word. There was a significant benefit of rhythmic priming for both children and adults, but the effect was smaller for children. In Experiment 6, a musical beat training programme was devised and evaluated for a group of older adults. After four weeks of training, a small improvement in speech reception thresholds was observed. It was concluded that beat perception is a useful skill to target in a musical intervention for speech perception in noise.