Situated approaches to musical experience

Author(s):  
Christoph Seibert

Informed by a review of recent attempts in cognitive science to overcome head-bound conceptions of the mind, this chapter investigates the contribution of ‘situated’ approaches to understanding music and consciousness, focusing on musical experience. It develops a systematic framework for discriminating between situated approaches, and based on this framework and an analysis of specific scenarios discusses the ways in which musical experience may be conceptualized as ‘situated’, elucidating the implications and explanatory potential of different approaches. Finally, there is a consideration of the framework’s value as a research tool for the analysis of situated aspects of musical practices. The aim is to advance an understanding of music and consciousness by contributing to conceptual clarity and by enriching the relationship between theoretical considerations and observation of musical practice.

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. Robert Slevc

A growing body of research suggests that musical experience and ability are related to a variety of cognitive abilities, including executive functioning (EF). However, it is not yet clear if these relationships are limited to specific components of EF, limited to auditory tasks, or reflect very general cognitive advantages. This study investigated the existence and generality of the relationship between musical ability and EFs by evaluating the musical experience and ability of a large group of participants and investigating whether this predicts individual differences on three different components of EF – inhibition, updating, and switching – in both auditory and visual modalities. Musical ability predicted better performance on both auditory and visual updating tasks, even when controlling for a variety of potential confounds (age, handedness, bilingualism, and socio-economic status). However, musical ability was not clearly related to inhibitory control and was unrelated to switching performance. These data thus show that cognitive advantages associated with musical ability are not limited to auditory processes, but are limited to specific aspects of EF. This supports a process-specific (but modality-general) relationship between musical ability and non-musical aspects of cognition.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oren Ergas

Curriculum discourse focuses understandably, on the formal and enacted curriculum; however, studies demonstrate that much of individuals’ waking hours are spent in task-unrelated thinking and mind-wandering. No less, this pervasive phenomenon has been shown to affect us in many ways that can be linked to education. This paper examines this null-hidden inner curriculum that is enacted within students’ minds when they are not attentive to the formal/enacted curriculum. Drawing on a review of research in cognitive science, the paper develops a theory of ‘the mind as a curriculum deliberator’ and explains how the mind can be seen as ‘schooling itself’. Different states of mind such as mind-wandering, rumination and mindfulness are discussed in terms of their educational effects and a systematic framework that renders them in curricular terms is suggested. Based on this analysis, the paper aims to mobilize this inner curriculum from opaqueness and absence to a more explicit presence in curricular discourse, in an attempt to broaden our understanding of how the mind can both enhance and hinder education.


2005 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-210 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yvonne Yiu

AbstractIn Italy, notably Florence, the late fourteenth and the fifteenth centuries witnessed the proliferation of texts that discuss the relationship between the mirror and painting. In them, the mirror is closely associated with major innovations of the time such as naturalistic representation and linear perspective. On a technical level, the authors describe the mirror's function in the painting of self-portraits and recommend it be used to draw foreshortened objects more easily and to judge the quality of finished paintings. The technical aspects often lead over to theoretical considerations such as the limitations of perspective, the origins of painting, the analogy between the mirror image and the painted image, and the concept that the mind of the painter resembles a mirror. The fact that these texts do not mention the concave mirror projection method described by Hockney and Falco speaks strongly against its use in the early Renaissance.


2015 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 19
Author(s):  
Giuseppe Gerbino

Ambiguously poised between composition and improvisation, works designated as fantasia in the sixteenth century thrived on the imaginative power of virtuoso performers. Or so the term would seem to suggest: it is not immediately clear in what sense this music should be understood and singled out as the product of the imagination. Isn’t music, any kind of music, the product of the imagination? What idea of imagination was this particular kind of music meant to represent? Drawing on the Aristotelian doctrine of the internal senses, this essay explores the relationship between fantasia as a musical process and sixteenth-century notions of fantasia as a mental process. From our vantage point in history, fantasia offers a rare opportunity to observe a cultural and musical practice aimed at translating the workings of the mind into a sensible object, which the perceiving subject can then (re)experience as a representation of his own inner life, in the way he himself imagines it. 


Author(s):  
Eleni Lapidaki ◽  
Rokus de Groot ◽  
Petros Stagkos

This article demonstrates the importance of communal music creativity in music education. The first part reviews the theoretical framework surrounding the relationship between practical socialization and creativity. The second part discusses music creativity as socio-musical practice. The third part describes the creativity-based project C.A.L.M. (Community Action in Learning Music), which aims to help students enrich their experiential learning through the development of musical practices that take place in, and through, the intersection of the musical worlds of the university and the school.


Author(s):  
Iia Fedorova

The main objective of this study is the substantiation of experiment as one of the key features of the world music in Ukraine. Based on the creative works of the brightest world music representatives in Ukraine, «Dakha Brakha» band, the experiment is regarded as a kind of creative setting. Methodology and scientific approaches. The methodology was based on the music practice theory by T. Cherednychenko. The author distinguishes four binary oppositions, which can describe the musical practice. According to one of these oppositions («observance of the canon or violation of the canon»), the musical practices, to which the Ukrainian musicology usually classifies the world music («folk music» and «minstrel music»), are compared with the creative work of «Dakha Brakha» band. Study findings. A lack of the setting to experiment in the musical practices of the «folk music» and «minstrel music» separates the world music musical practice from them. Therefore, the world music is a separate type of musical practice in which the experiment is crucial. The study analyzed several scientific articles of Ukrainian musicologists on the world music; examined the history of the Ukrainian «Dakha Brakha» band; presented a list of the folk songs used in the fifth album «The Road» by «Dakha Brakha» band; and showed the degree of the source transformation by musicians based on the example of the «Monk» song. The study findings can be used to form a comprehensive understanding of the world music musical practice. The further studies may be related to clarification of the other parameters of the world music musical practice, and to determination of the experiment role in creative works of the other world music representatives, both Ukrainian and foreign. The practical study value is the ability to use its key provisions in the course of modern music in higher artistic schools of Ukraine. Originality / value. So far, the Ukrainian musicology did not consider the experiment role as the key one in the world music.


2005 ◽  
Vol 60 (3) ◽  
pp. 425-427
Author(s):  
Csaba Pléh

Ádám György: A rejtozködo elme. Egy fiziológus széljegyzetei Carpendale, J. I. M. és Müller, U. (eds): Social interaction and the development of knowledge Cloninger, R. C.: Feeling good. The science of well being Dunbar, Robin, Barrett, Louise, Lycett, John: Evolutionary psychology Dunbar, Robin: The human story. A new history of makind's evolution Geary, D. C.: The origin of mind. Evolution of brain, cognition and general intelligence Gedeon Péter, Pál Eszter, Sárkány Mihály, Somlai Péter: Az evolúció elméletei és metaforái a társadalomtudományokban Harré, Rom: Cognitive science: A philosophical introduction Horváth György: Pedagógiai pszichológia Marcus, G.: The birth of the mind. How a tiny number of genes creates the complexities of human thought Solso, R. D.: The psychology of art and the evolution of the conscious brain Wray, A. (ed.): The transition to language


This survey of research on psychology in five volumes is a part of a series undertaken by the ICSSR since 1969, which covers various disciplines under social science. Volume Five of this survey, Explorations into Psyche and Psychology: Some Emerging Perspectives, examines the future of psychology in India. For a very long time, intellectual investments in understanding mental life have led to varied formulations about mind and its functions across the word. However, a critical reflection of the state of the disciplinary affairs indicates the dominance of Euro-American theories and methods, which offer an understanding coloured by a Western world view, which fails to do justice with many non-Western cultural settings. The chapters in this volume expand the scope of psychology to encompass indigenous knowledge available in the Indian tradition and invite engaging with emancipatory concerns as well as broadening the disciplinary base. The contributors situate the difference between the Eastern and Western conceptions of the mind in the practice of psychology. They look at this discipline as shaped by and shaping between systems like yoga. They also analyse animal behaviour through the lens of psychology and bring out insights about evolution of individual and social behaviour. This volume offers critique the contemporary psychological practices in India and offers a new perspective called ‘public psychology’ to construe and analyse the relationship between psychologists and their objects of study. Finally, some paradigmatic, pedagogical, and substantive issues are highlighted to restructure the practice of psychology in the Indian setting.


2005 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 565-582 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Eunice Quilici Gonzalez

The impact of new advanced technology on issues that concern meaningful information and its relation to studies of intelligence constitutes the main topic of the present paper. The advantages, disadvantages and implications of the synthetic methodology developed by cognitive scientists, according to which mechanical models of the mind, such as computer simulations or self-organizing robots, may provide good explanatory tools to investigate cognition, are discussed. A difficulty with this methodology is pointed out, namely the use of meaningless information to explain intelligent behavior that incorporates meaningful information. In this context, it is inquired what are the contributions of cognitive science to contemporary studies of intelligent behavior and how technology may play a role in the analysis of the relationships established by organisms in their natural and social environments.


2011 ◽  
Vol 187 ◽  
pp. 522-527
Author(s):  
He Yang

As an integral element of the space environment, the environmental sculpture plays an important role in the decoration of space environment, the expression of urban culture and reflection of the city's character, etc. Environmental sculpture is a visible symbol independent and outside of the sign of nature or architectural language, which has become an important cultural carrier between the communication of environment and people. From the perspective of cognitive science, this paper analyzes the relationship between people, environment and environmental sculpture to explore the psychological characteristics of cognition of environmental sculpture and examines, analyzes and interprets the phenomenon of environmental sculpture from the cognitive psychology perspective, which brings some enlightenment for the design of environment sculpture.


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