Universal interpretations of vocal music

Ecological Momentary Assessment Reveals Causal Effects of Music Enrichment on Infant Mood

Music appears universally in human infancy with self-evident effects: as many parents know intuitively, infants love to be sung to. The long-term effects of parental singing remain unclear, however. In an offset-design exploratory 10-week randomized trial conducted in 2023 (110 families of young infants, Mage = 3.67 months, 53% female, 73% White), the study manipulated the frequency of infant-directed singing via a music enrichment intervention. Results, measured by smartphone-based ecological momentary assessment (EMA), show that infant-directed singing causes general post-intervention improvements to infant mood, but not to caregiver mood. The findings show the feasibility of longitudinal EMA (retention: 92%; EMA response rate: 74%) of infants and the potential of longer-term and higher-intensity music enrichment interventions to improve health in infancy.

Loss of dance and infant-directed song among the Northern Aché

Dance and infant-directed song are often considered universal behaviors, a view that has been supported by considerable cross-cultural research.1,2 The conclusion that humans in every documented society engage in these behaviors has, in turn, influenced evolutionary theories of music, which often treat human musicality as an adaptation, with benefits stemming from moving in synchrony and/or singing to infants.3,4 Drawing on 122 months of fieldwork conducted between 1977 and 2020, we here report no evidence of either dance or infant-directed song among the Northern Aché of Paraguay. Excluding church singing introduced by missionaries, Northern Aché adults sing alone and in a very limited number of styles. Several lines of evidence suggest that dance and infant-directed song were lost following reductions in population size that curtailed cultural complexity among the ancestors of the Northern Aché. Although our observations are consistent with a universal psychological capacity for dance and infant-directed song, they indicate a critical role of cultural transmission in supporting these behaviors while demonstrating the value of testing claims of cultural universality in remote and minimally acculturated populations.

Vocalizations are ideal identity signals

If human societies are understood as identity groups, then our psychology should include design for the production and detection of credible identity signals. We argue that vocalizations are ideal identity signals because the human auditory system is sensitive to subtle acoustic features; vocal signals are efficient; and speech and song are highly complex, enabling the embedding therein of identity signals.

Acoustic features of instrumental movie soundtracks elicit distinct and mostly non-overlapping extra-musical meanings in the mind of the listener

Music can evoke powerful emotions in listeners. However, the role that instrumental music (music without any vocal part) plays in conveying extra-musical meaning, above and beyond emotions, is still a debated question. We conducted a study wherein participants (N = 121) listened to twenty 15-second-long excerpts of polyphonic instrumental soundtrack music and reported (i) perceived emotions (e.g., happiness, sadness) as well as (ii) movie scene properties imagined during listening (e.g., scene brightness, character role). We systematically investigated how acoustic features of instrumental soundtrack excerpts (e.g., tempo, loudness) contributed to mental imagery of movie scenes. We show distinct and mostly non-overlapping contributions of acoustic features to the imagination of properties of movie scene settings, characters, actions, and objects. Moreover, we find that negatively-valenced emotions fully mediate the relation between a subset of acoustic features and movie scene properties, providing evidence for the importance of emotional valence in evoking mental imagery. The data demonstrate the capacity of music to convey extra-musical semantic information through audition.

Appreciation of singing and speaking voices is highly idiosyncratic

Voice preferences are an integral part of interpersonal interactions and shape how people connect with each other. While a large number of studies have investigated the mechanisms behind (speaking) voice attractiveness, very little research was dedicated to other types of vocalizations. In this Registered Report, we proposed to investigate voice preferences with an integrative approach. To this end, we used a newly recorded and validated stimulus set of contrasting vocalizations by 22 highly trained female singers speaking and singing the same material (in Brazilian Portuguese) in contrasting styles (sung as a lullaby, as a pop song or as an opera aria; and spoken aloud as if directed to an adult audience and as if directed to an infant). We asked 62 participants to rate these vocalizations in terms of how much they liked them; and we compared the amount of shared taste (that is, how much participants agreed in their preferences) across styles. We found highly idiosyncratic preferences across all styles. Our predictions concerning shared taste were not confirmed: although shared taste was higher for lullaby than for pop singing, it was unexpectedly higher for operatic than pop singing, and higher for infant-directed than adult-directed speech. Conversely, our prediction of limited consistency in average preferences for some singers across styles was confirmed, contradicting sexual selection-based ideas of singing and speaking as 'backup' signals of individual fitness. Our findings draw attention to the role of individual differences in voice preferences and highlight the need for a broader approach to understanding the underlying mechanisms of voice preferences. Stage 1 recommendation and review history: https://rr.peercommunityin.org/articles/rec?id=357. Stage 2 recommendation and review history: https://rr.peercommunityin.org/articles/rec?id=802.

Classical singers are also proficient in non-classical singing

Classical singers train intensively for many years to achieve a high level of vocal control and specific sound characteristics. However, the actual span of singers' activities often includes venues other than opera halls and requires performing in styles outside their strict training (e.g., singing pop songs at weddings). We examine classical singers' ability to adjust their vocal productions to other styles, in relation with their formal training. Twenty-two highly trained female classical singers (aged from 22 to 45 years old; vocal training ranging from 4.5 to 27 years) performed six different melody excerpts a cappella in contrasting ways: as an opera aria, as a pop song and as a lullaby. All melodies were sung both with lyrics and with a /lu/ sound. All productions were acoustically analyzed in terms of seven common acoustic descriptors of voice/singing performances and perceptually evaluated by a total of 50 lay listeners (aged from 21 to 73 years old) who were asked to identify the intended singing style in a forced-choice lab experiment. Acoustic analyses of the 792 performances suggest distinct acoustic profiles, implying that singers were able to produce contrasting sounding performances. Furthermore, the high overall style recognition rate (78.5% Correct Responses, hence CR) confirmed singers' proficiency in performing in operatic style (86% CR) and their versatility when it comes to lullaby (80% CR) and pop performances (69% CR), albeit with occasional confusion between the latter two. Interestingly, different levels of competence among singers appeared, with versatility (as estimated based on correct recognition in pop/lullaby styles) ranging from 62 to 83% depending on the singer. Importantly, this variability was not linked to formal training per se. Our results indicate that classical singers are versatile, and prompt the need for further investigations to clarify the role of singers' broader professional and personal experiences in the development of this valuable ability.