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Browsing by Author "Schellenberg, E. Glenn"

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    Changing the tune: listeners like music that expresses a contrasting emotion
    (2012) Schellenberg, E. Glenn; Corrigall, Kathleen; Ladinig, Olivia; Huron, David
    Theories of esthetic appreciation propose that (1) a stimulus is liked because it is expected or familiar, (2) a stimulus is liked most when it is neither too familiar nor too novel, or (3) a novel stimulus is liked because it elicits an intensified emotional response. We tested the third hypothesis by examining liking for music as a function of whether the emotion it expressed contrasted with the emotion expressed by music heard previously. Stimuli were 30-s happy- or sad-sounding excerpts from recordings of classical piano music. On each trial, listeners heard a different excerpt and made liking and emotion-intensity ratings. The emotional character of consecutive excerpts was repeated with varying frequencies, followed by an excerpt that expressed a contrasting emotion. As the number of presentations of the background emotion increased, liking and intensity ratings became lower compared to those for the contrasting emotion. Consequently, when the emotional character of the music was relatively novel, listeners’ responses intensified and their appreciation increased.
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    Group music training and children’s prosocial skills
    (2015) Schellenberg, E. Glenn; Corrigall, Kathleen; Dys, Sebastian P.; Malti, Tina
    We investigated if group music training in childhood is associated with prosocial skills. Children in 3rd or 4th grade who attended 10 months of music lessons taught in groups were compared to a control group of children matched for socio-economic status. All children were administered tests of prosocial skills near the beginning and end of the 10-month period. Compared to the control group, children in the music group had larger increases in sympathy and prosocial behavior, but this effect was limited to children who had poor prosocial skills before the lessons began. The effect was evident even when the lessons were compulsory, which minimized the role of self-selection. The results suggest that group music training facilitates the development of prosocial skills.
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    Measuring children’s harmonic knowledge with implicit and explicit tests
    (2022) Corrigall, Kathleen; Tillmann, Barbara; Schellenberg, E. Glenn
    We used implicit and explicit tasks to measure knowledge of Western harmony in musically trained and untrained Canadian children. Younger children were 6-7 years of age; older children were 10-11. On each trial, participants heard a sequence of five piano chords. The first four chords established a major-key context. The final chord was the standard, expected tonic of the context or one of two deviant endings: the highly unexpected flat supertonic or the moderately unexpected subdominant. In the implicit task, children identified the timbre of the final chord (guitar or piano) as quickly as possible. Response times were faster for the tonic ending than for either deviant ending, but the magnitude of the priming effect was similar for the two deviants, and the effect did not vary as a function of age or music training. In the explicit task, children rated how good each chord sequence sounded. Ratings were highest for sequences with the tonic ending, intermediate for the subdominant, and lowest for the flat supertonic. Moreover, the difference between the tonic and deviant sequences was larger for older children with music training. Thus, the explicit task provided a more nuanced picture of musical knowledge than did the implicit task.
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    Music training, cognition, and personality
    (2013) Corrigall, Kathleen; Schellenberg, E. Glenn; Misura, Nicole M.
    Although most studies that examined associations between music training and cognitive abilities had correlational designs, the prevailing bias is that music training causes improvements in cognition. It is also possible, however, that high-functioning children are more likely than other children to take music lessons, and that they also differ in personality. We asked whether individual differences in cognition and personality predict who takes music lessons and for how long. The participants were 118 adults (Study 1) and 167 10- to 12-year-old children (Study 2). We collected demographic information and measured cognitive ability and the Big Five personality dimensions. As in previous research, cognitive ability was associated with musical involvement even when demographic variables were controlled statistically. Novel findings indicated that personality was associated with musical involvement when demographics and cognitive ability were held constant, and that openness-to-experience was the personality dimension with the best predictive power. These findings reveal that: (1) individual differences influence who takes music lessons and for how long, (2) personality variables are at least as good as cognitive variables at predicting music training, and (3) future correlational studies of links between music training and non-musical ability should account for individual differences in personality.
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    Predicting who takes music lessons: parent and child characteristics
    (2015) Corrigall, Kathleen; Schellenberg, E. Glenn
    Studies on associations between music training and cognitive abilities typically focus on the possible benefits of music lessons. Recent research suggests, however, that many of these associations stem from niche-picking tendencies, which lead certain individuals to be more likely than others to take music lessons, especially for long durations. Because the initial decision to take music lessons is made primarily by a child's parents, at least at younger ages, we asked whether individual differences in parents' personality predict young children's duration of training. Children between 7 and 9 years of age (N = 170) with varying amounts of music training completed a measure of IQ. Their parents provided demographic information as well as ratings of their own and their child's Big Five personality dimensions. Children's personality traits predicted duration of music training even when demographic variables and intelligence were held constant, replicating findings reported previously with 10- to 12-year-olds and 17-year-olds. A novel finding was that parents' openness-to-experience predicted children's duration of training, even when characteristics that pertained to children (demographic variables, intelligence, and personality) were controlled statistically. Our findings are indicative of passive and active gene-environment correlations, whereby genetic predispositions influence the likelihood that a child will have certain experiences, such as music training.