Multivariate analyses of dynamic correlations between continuous acoustic properties (intensity and spectral flatness) and real-time listener perceptions of change and expressed affect (arousal and valence) in music are developed, by an extensive application of autoregressive Time Series Analysis (TSA). TSA offers a large suite of techniques for modeling autocorrelated time series, such as constitute both music's acoustic properties and its perceptual impacts. A logical analysis sequence from autoregressive integrated moving average regression with exogenous variables (ARIMAX), to vector autoregression (VAR) is established. Information criteria discriminate amongst models, and Granger Causality indicates whether a correlation might be a causal one. A 3 min electroacoustic extract from Wishart's Red Bird is studied. It contains digitally generated and transformed sounds, and animate sounds, and our approach also permits an analysis of their impulse action on the temporal evolution and the variance in the perceptual time series. Intensity influences perceptions of change and expressed arousal substantially. Spectral flatness influences valence, while animate sounds influence the valence response and its variance. This TSA approach is applicable to a wide range of questions concerning acousticperceptual relationships in music.

A listener's propensity to perceive affect as expressed by music can arise from factors such as acoustic features and culturally learned expectations. Studies investigating the link between musical flow and perceived affective content by means of continuous response measures and a 2-dimensional circumplex framework of affect (i.e., arousal and valence) have given positive results. For example, time series models of perceived arousal in response to Western classical and electroacoustic music reveal a significant predictive influence of acoustic parameters such as intensity and spectral flatness. Acoustic parameters generally provide weaker models of perceived valence. Here we test the hypothesis that a continuous measure of musical engagement can be a significant predictor of perceived arousal and perceived valence, and will enhance time series models of affect based on acoustic parameters alone. Thirty-five nonmusicians continuously rated their level of engagement while listening to 5 Western classical and electroacoustic music excerpts. Grand unweighted mean engagement time series for each piece from all 35 participants were used to model continuous-response time series of perceived arousal and perceived valence. The hypothesis was partially supported: in univariate autoregressive analyses, 1 of the valence and 2 of the arousal models were strongly improved by adding engagement as a predictor; and in a further 2 of each, engagement made a minor contribution. In the remaining 2 models of valence and 1 of arousal, engagement was not pertinent. In multivariate (vector autoregressive) models, relating simultaneously both arousal and valence to acoustic parameters, engagement had a role in every case. It is concluded that listener engagement can play a mediating role in perceived affective response to music.

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Affective responses to music have been shown to be influenced by the psychoacoustic features of the acoustic signal, learned associations between musical features and emotions, and familiarity with a musical system through exposure. The present article reports two experiments investigating whether short-term exposure has an effect on valence and consonance ratings of unfamiliar musical chords from the Bohlen-Pierce system, which are not based on a traditional Western musical scale. In a pre- and post-test design, exposure to positive, negative and neutral chord types was manipulated to test for an effect of exposure on liking. In this paradigm, short-term (“mere”) exposure to unfamiliar chords produced an increase only in valence ratings for negative chords. In neither experiment did it produce an increase in valence or pleasantness ratings for other chord types. Contrast effects for some chord types were found in both experiments, suggesting that a chord’s affect (i.e., affective response to the chord) might be emphasised when the chord is preceded by a stimulus with a contrasting affect. The results confirmed those of a previous study showing that psychoacoustic features play an important role in the perception of music. The findings are discussed in light of their psychological and musical implications.

In a continuous recognition paradigm, most stimuli elicit superior recognition performance when the item to be recognised is the most recent stimulus (a recency-in-memory effect). Furthermore, increasing the number of intervening items cumulatively disrupts memory in most domains. Memory for melodies composed in familiar tuning systems also shows superior recognition for the most recent melody, but no disruptive effects from the number of intervening melodies. A possible explanation has been offered in a novel regenerative multiple representations (RMR) conjecture. The RMR assumes that prior knowledge informs perception and perception influences memory representations. It postulates that melodies are perceived, thus also represented, simultaneously as integrated entities and also their components (such as pitches, pitch intervals, short phrases, and rhythm). Multiple representations of the melody components and melody as a whole can restore one another, thus providing resilience against disruptive effects from intervening items. The conjecture predicts that melodies in an unfamiliar tuning system are not perceived as integrated melodies and should: a) disrupt recency-in-memory advantages; and b) facilitate disruptive effects from the number of intervening items. We test these two predictions in three experiments. Experiments 1 and 2 show that no recency-in-memory effects emerge for melodies in an unfamiliar tuning system. In Experiment 3, disruptive effects occurred as the number of intervening items and unfamiliarity of the stimuli increased. Overall, results are coherent with the predictions of the RMR conjecture. Further investigation of the conjecture's predictions may lead to greater understanding of the fundamental relationships between memory, perception, and behavior.