scholarly journals Sounds familiar(?): Expertise with specific musical genres modulates timing perception and micro-level synchronization to auditory stimuli

Author(s):  
Anne Danielsen ◽  
Kristian Nymoen ◽  
Martin Torvik Langerød ◽  
Eirik Jacobsen ◽  
Mats Johansson ◽  
...  

AbstractMusical expertise improves the precision of timing perception and performance – but is this expertise generic, or is it tied to the specific style(s) and genre(s) of one’s musical training? We asked expert musicians from three musical genres (folk, jazz, and EDM/hip-hop) to align click tracks and tap in synchrony with genre-specific and genre-neutral sound stimuli to determine the perceptual center (“P-center”) and variability (“beat bin”) for each group of experts. We had three stimulus categories – Organic, Electronic, and Neutral sounds – each of which had a 2 × 2 design of the acoustic factors Attack (fast/slow) and Duration (short/long). We found significant effects of Genre expertise, and a significant interaction for both P-center and P-center variability: folk and jazz musicians synchronize to sounds typical of folk and jazz in a different manner than the EDM/hip-hop producers. The results show that expertise in a specific musical genre affects our low-level perceptions of sounds as well as their affordance(s) for joint action/synchronization. The study provides new insights into the effects of active long-term musical enculturation and skill acquisition on basic sensorimotor synchronization and timing perception, shedding light on the important question of how nature and nurture intersect in the development of our perceptual systems.

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linus Holm ◽  
Gustaf Wadenholt ◽  
Paul Schrater

Humans often appear to desire information for its own sake, but it is presently unclear what drives this desire. The important role that resolving uncertainty plays in stimulating information seeking has suggested a tight coupling between the intrinsic motivation to gather information and performance gains, and has been construed as a drive for long-term learning. Using a simple asteroid-avoidance game that allows us to study learning and information seeking at an experimental time-scale, we show that we can separate the incentive for information-seeking from a long-term learning outcome, and show that information-seeking is best predicted by per-trial outcome uncertainty. Specifically, our 43 participants were more willing to take time penalties for feedback on trials with uncertain outcomes. We found strong group (R2 = .97) and individual level (mean R2 = .44) support for a linear relationship between feedback request rate and information gain as determined by per-trial outcome uncertainty. This information better reflects filling in the gaps of the episodic record of choice outcomes than long-term skill acquisition or assessment. Our results suggest that this easy to compute quantity can drive information-seeking, potentially allowing simple organisms to intelligently gather information without having to anticipate the impact on future performance.


2016 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 231-245 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles M. Yates ◽  
Timothy Justus ◽  
Nart Bedin Atalay ◽  
Nazike Mert ◽  
Sandra E. Trehub

Western music is characterized primarily by simple meters, but a number of other musical cultures, including Turkish, have both simple and complex meters. In Experiment 1, Turkish and American adults with and without musical training were asked to detect metrical changes in Turkish music with simple and complex meter. Musicians performed significantly better than nonmusicians, and performance was significantly better on simple meter than on complex meter, but Turkish listeners performed no differently than American listeners. In Experiment 2, members of Turkish classical and folk music clubs who were tested on the same materials exhibited comparable sensitivity to simple and complex meters, unlike the American and Turkish listeners in Experiment 1. Together, the findings reveal important effects of musical training and culture on meter perception: trained musicians are generally more sensitive than nonmusicians, regardless of metrical complexity, but sensitivity to complex meter requires sufficient exposure to musical genres featuring such meters.


2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-84
Author(s):  
Muhammad Yaser Arafat

This paper seeks to study the recitation of the Qur'an with the recitation of Javanese style as an interpretation in the reading. The recitation of the Javanese style is done by reciting the Qur'an by using the rhythm of the spiritual sound art treasury of Sekar Macapat. The recitation of Javanese style is not an insult to the Qur'an. Reading practice is not the same as chanting the Qur'an with the rhythm of Arabic songs, dangdut, punk, hip-hop, and other types of musical genres. the recitation of the Qur'an with the Javanese rhythm derived from Sekar Macapat is a good, beautiful, and more important, suluki. it means that the recitation of Javanese style is an act of reciting the Qur'an as well as a cultured act, which aims to draw closer to Allah Almighty, the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), and to connect himself to the spiritual genealogy of the saints in Java. therefore, I call it "Jawi's recitation," which in Javanese spiritual treasury means one who has understood the real reality (al-Haq).


2007 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 217-227
Author(s):  
Ming-Hon Hwang ◽  
Hsin Rau

In the industrial economy, evaluating company performance based on financial results was good enough. However, in the current globalized and highly competitive environment, maintaining long term competitiveness requires companies to engage in overall strategic planning and performance evaluation. The balanced scorecard is a tool or method for balancing an organization's performance and can react to situations where a company's direction becomes disoriented. This approach assists in strategy planning, process management, and performance evaluation from four perspectives, including financial, customer, internal process, and learning and growth. Good strategy planning provides companies with a correct management direction, correct process management ensures the efficient execution of plans, and correct performance evaluation illustrates the execution results. This study mainly focuses on how a large rubber company in Taiwan utilizes the balanced scorecard in its organization. As the technical perspective is important in the rubber keypad industry, besides the four above perspectives, this company has added the technical perspective. By introducing this company and its progress in implementing the balanced scorecard, this study hopes to provide other companies, especially rubber companies, with a planning direction and reference for the future implementation of the balanced scorecard.


Author(s):  
Chaochao Lin ◽  
Matteo Pozzi

Optimal exploration of engineering systems can be guided by the principle of Value of Information (VoI), which accounts for the topological important of components, their reliability and the management costs. For series systems, in most cases higher inspection priority should be given to unreliable components. For redundant systems such as parallel systems, analysis of one-shot decision problems shows that higher inspection priority should be given to more reliable components. This paper investigates the optimal exploration of redundant systems in long-term decision making with sequential inspection and repairing. When the expected, cumulated, discounted cost is considered, it may become more efficient to give higher inspection priority to less reliable components, in order to preserve system redundancy. To investigate this problem, we develop a Partially Observable Markov Decision Process (POMDP) framework for sequential inspection and maintenance of redundant systems, where the VoI analysis is embedded in the optimal selection of exploratory actions. We investigate the use of alternative approximate POMDP solvers for parallel and more general systems, compare their computation complexities and performance, and show how the inspection priorities depend on the economic discount factor, the degradation rate, the inspection precision, and the repair cost.


Author(s):  
Dafnis Vidal Pérez ◽  
José Miguel Martínez-Sanz ◽  
Alberto Ferriz-Valero ◽  
Violeta Gómez-Vicente ◽  
Eva Ausó

Weightlifting is a discipline where technique and anthropometric characteristics are essential to achieve the best results in competitions. This study aims to analyse the relationships between body composition, limb length and barbell kinematics in the performance of weightlifters. It consists of an observational and descriptive study of 19 athletes (12 men [28.50 ± 6.37 years old; 84.58 ± 14.11 kg; 176.18 ± 6.85 cm] and 7 women [27.71 ± 6.34 years old; 64.41 ± 7.63 kg; 166.94 ± 4.11 cm]) who met the inclusion criteria. A level I anthropometrist took anthropometric measures according to the methodology of the International Society for the Advancement of Kinanthropometry (ISAK), and the measurement of the barbell velocity was made with the software Kinovea. In terms of body composition, both genders are within the percentage range of fat mass recommended for this sport. In female weightlifters, there is a positive correlation between foot length, maximal velocity in the Snatch (ρ = 0.775, p = 0.041), and performance indicator in the Snatch and the Clean & Jerk (ρ = 0.964, p < 0.001; ρ = 0.883, p = 0.008, respectively). In male weightlifters, a positive correlation between tibial length and average velocity of the barbell in the Snatch is observed (ρ = 0.848, p < 0.001). Muscle mass percentage correlates positively with performance indicator in both techniques (ρ = 0.634, p = 0.027; ρ = 0.720, p = 0.008). Also, the relative length of the upper limb is negatively correlated with the performance indicator (ρ = −0.602, p = 0.038). Anthropometry and body composition may facilitate skill acquisition among this sport population, contributing to increase the limited body of scientific knowledge related to weightlifting.


Particles ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 333-342
Author(s):  
Ignacio Lázaro Roche

Tomography based on cosmic muon absorption is a rising technique because of its versatility and its consolidation as a geophysics tool over the past decade. It allows us to address major societal issues such as long-term stability of natural and man-made large infrastructures or sustainable underwater management. Traditionally, muon trackers consist of hodoscopes or multilayer detectors. For applications with challenging available volumes or the wide field of view required, a thin time projection chamber (TPC) associated with a Micromegas readout plane can provide a good tradeoff between compactness and performance. This paper details the design of such a TPC aiming at maximizing primary signal and minimizing track reconstruction artifacts. The results of the measurements performed during a case study addressing the aforementioned applications are discussed. The current works lines and perspectives of the project are also presented.


2018 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 150-159
Author(s):  
Jonathan M. P. Wilbiks ◽  
Sean Hutchins

In previous research, there exists some debate about the effects of musical training on memory for verbal material. The current research examines this relationship, while also considering musical training effects on memory for musical excerpts. Twenty individuals with musical training were tested and their results were compared to 20 age-matched individuals with no musical experience. Musically trained individuals demonstrated a higher level of memory for classical musical excerpts, with no significant differences for popular musical excerpts or for words. These findings are in support of previous research showing that while music and words overlap in terms of their processing in the brain, there is not necessarily a facilitative effect between training in one domain and performance in the other.


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