This study was conducted to determine how listeners derive global evaluations of past musical durations from moment-to-moment experience. Participants produced moment-to-moment affective intensity ratings by pressing a pressure-sensitive button while listening to various selections. They later reported the remembered affective intensity of each example. The data suggest that the assumption that remembered affect equals the sum of all momentary affects fundamentally misrepresents how listeners encode and label past affective experiences. The duration of particular rather than uniform episodes contributes minimally to remembered affect (duration neglect). Listeners rely on the peak of affective intensity during a selection, the last moment, and moments that are more emotionally intense than immediately previous moments to determine postperformance ratings. The peak proves to be the strongest predictor of remembered affect. We derive a formula that takes moment-to-moment experience as input and predicts how listeners will remember musical affect. The formula is a better predictor of postperformance affect than any other on-line characteristic considered. Last, the utility of the formula is demonstrated through a brief examination of compositional decisions in a string quartet movement by Borodin and one typical format of four-movement symphonies from the classical period.

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Objective: To determine the contribution of white matter hyperintensities (WMH) to language deficits while accounting for cortical atrophy in individuals with primary progressive aphasia (PPA). Method: Forty-three individuals with PPA completed neuropsychological assessments of nonverbal semantics, naming, and sentence repetition plus T2-weighted and fluid-attenuated inversion recovery scans. Using three visual scales, we rated WMH and cerebral ventricle size for both scan types. We used Spearman correlations to evaluate associations between the scales and scans. To test whether visual ratings—particularly of WMH—are associated with language, we compared a base model (including gray matter component scores obtained via principal component analysis, age, and days between assessment and MRI as independent variables) with full models (ie, the base model plus visual ratings) for each language variable. Results: Visual ratings were significantly associated within and between scans and were significantly correlated with age but not with other vascular risk factors. Only the T2 scan ratings were associated with language abilities. Specifically, controlling for other variables, poorer naming was significantly related to larger ventricles (P = 0.033) and greater global (P = 0.033) and periventricular (P = 0.049) WMH. High global WMH (P = 0.034) were also correlated with worse sentence repetition skills. Conclusion: Visual ratings of global brain health were associated with language deficits in PPA independent of cortical atrophy and age. While WMH are not unique to PPA, measuring WMH in conjunction with cortical atrophy may elucidate more accurate brain structure–behavior relationships in PPA than cortical atrophy measures alone.

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