Goldsmiths Musical Sophistication Index

Müllensiefen, Daniel; Gingras, Bruno; Musil, Jason

doi:10.1037/t42817-000

Cited by 29 publications

(37 citation statements)

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“…Simple stimuli are isochronous hymn melodies while the complex stimuli are taken from Schubert lieder. Expertise (2 levels: musician, non-musician) refers to the level of musical training of the participants; musicians scored ≥ 33 on the musical training subscale of the Goldsmiths Musical Sophistication Index (Gold-MSI, v0.9) (Müllensiefen et al, 2011), whereas non-musicians scored ≤ 20 (see Section Participants).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Members of the musician group self-declared as such and scored ≥33 on the musical training subscale of the Goldsmiths Musical Sophistication Index (Gold-MSI, v0.9) (Müllensiefen et al, 2011), whereas members of the non-musician group self-declared as such and scored ≤ 20. These upper and lower limits correspond to the 67th and 33rd percentile scores from a random sample of 488 individuals from the general British population (Müllensiefen et al, 2011). Average musical training scores for musicians and non-musicians were 53.12 ( SD : 7.83; range: 36–62) and 13.94 ( SD : 3.56; range: 9–20), respectively.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Candidate participants were pre-screened for musical background and demographic data using an online survey containing the three subscales “musical training,” “importance,” and “emotion” from Gold-MSI (Müllensiefen et al, 2011). Eligible participants were subsequently tested individually using headphones.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Predictive uncertainty in auditory sequence processing

2014

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Previous studies of auditory expectation have focused on the expectedness perceived by listeners retrospectively in response to events. In contrast, this research examines predictive uncertainty—a property of listeners' prospective state of expectation prior to the onset of an event. We examine the information-theoretic concept of Shannon entropy as a model of predictive uncertainty in music cognition. This is motivated by the Statistical Learning Hypothesis, which proposes that schematic expectations reflect probabilistic relationships between sensory events learned implicitly through exposure. Using probability estimates from an unsupervised, variable-order Markov model, 12 melodic contexts high in entropy and 12 melodic contexts low in entropy were selected from two musical repertoires differing in structural complexity (simple and complex). Musicians and non-musicians listened to the stimuli and provided explicit judgments of perceived uncertainty (explicit uncertainty). We also examined an indirect measure of uncertainty computed as the entropy of expectedness distributions obtained using a classical probe-tone paradigm where listeners rated the perceived expectedness of the final note in a melodic sequence (inferred uncertainty). Finally, we simulate listeners' perception of expectedness and uncertainty using computational models of auditory expectation. A detailed model comparison indicates which model parameters maximize fit to the data and how they compare to existing models in the literature. The results show that listeners experience greater uncertainty in high-entropy musical contexts than low-entropy contexts. This effect is particularly apparent for inferred uncertainty and is stronger in musicians than non-musicians. Consistent with the Statistical Learning Hypothesis, the results suggest that increased domain-relevant training is associated with an increasingly accurate cognitive model of probabilistic structure in music.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Predictive uncertainty in auditory sequence processing

2014

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“…For measures of musicality, the current study uses the self-report questionnaire from the Goldsmiths Musical Sophistication Index (Gold-MSI) (Müllensiefen et al, 2011), which in its full form includes a battery of listening tests including melodic memory, beat perception, and sound similarity; the self-report questionnaire alone has been validated using objective listening tests and is an effective measure of musical ability (Müllensiefen et al, 2014). The self-report inventory scores participants along five factors of musical engagement: active engagement, perceptual abilities, musical training, singing abilities, and emotional engagement.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Furthermore, individual differences such as genetic predispositions and possible epigenetic factors related to music (Tan et al, 2014; Kanduri et al, 2015; Schellenberg, 2015), motivation toward music, and exposure to different kinds of musical environments may also influence the differences between behavioral and brain responses to musical stimuli and the interactions between musical experience and language experience. This idea is emphasized by using the Goldsmiths Musical Sophistication Index, a measure of musicality that takes into consideration other factors contributing to interactions with music, weighting them along with formal training to gain a more holistic measure of musical sophistication and greater sensitivity to subtle differences in musical abilities (Müllensiefen et al, 2011, 2014). …”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Musical Sophistication and the Effect of Complexity on Auditory Discrimination in Finnish Speakers

et al. 2017

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Musical experiences and native language are both known to affect auditory processing. The present work aims to disentangle the influences of native language phonology and musicality on behavioral and subcortical sound feature processing in a population of musically diverse Finnish speakers as well as to investigate the specificity of enhancement from musical training. Finnish speakers are highly sensitive to duration cues since in Finnish, vowel and consonant duration determine word meaning. Using a correlational approach with a set of behavioral sound feature discrimination tasks, brainstem recordings, and a musical sophistication questionnaire, we find no evidence for an association between musical sophistication and more precise duration processing in Finnish speakers either in the auditory brainstem response or in behavioral tasks, but they do show an enhanced pitch discrimination compared to Finnish speakers with less musical experience and show greater duration modulation in a complex task. These results are consistent with a ceiling effect set for certain sound features which corresponds to the phonology of the native language, leaving an opportunity for music experience-based enhancement of sound features not explicitly encoded in the language (such as pitch, which is not explicitly encoded in Finnish). Finally, the pattern of duration modulation in more musically sophisticated Finnish speakers suggests integrated feature processing for greater efficiency in a real world musical situation. These results have implications for research into the specificity of plasticity in the auditory system as well as to the effects of interaction of specific language features with musical experiences.

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Emotion and expertise: how listeners with formal music training use cues to perceive emotion

Battcock

Schutz

2021

Psychological Research

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Although studies of musical emotion often focus on the role of the composer and performer, the communicative process is also influenced by the listener’s musical background or experience. Given the equivocal nature of evidence regarding the effects of musical training, the role of listener expertise in conveyed musical emotion remains opaque. Here we examine emotional responses of musically trained listeners across two experiments using (1) eight measure excerpts, (2) musically resolved excerpts and compare them to responses collected from untrained listeners in Battcock and Schutz (2019). In each experiment 30 participants with six or more years of music training rated perceived emotion for 48 excerpts from Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier (WTC) using scales of valence and arousal. Models of listener ratings predict more variance in trained vs. untrained listeners across both experiments. More importantly however, we observe a shift in cue weights related to training. Using commonality analysis and Fischer Z score comparisons as well as margin of error calculations, we show that timing and mode affect untrained listeners equally, whereas mode plays a significantly stronger role than timing for trained listeners. This is not to say the emotional messages are less well recognized by untrained listeners—simply that training appears to shift the relative weight of cues used in making evaluations. These results clarify music training’s potential impact on the specific effects of cues in conveying musical emotion.

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Goldsmiths Musical Sophistication Index

Cited by 29 publications

References 0 publications

Predictive uncertainty in auditory sequence processing

Predictive uncertainty in auditory sequence processing

Musical Sophistication and the Effect of Complexity on Auditory Discrimination in Finnish Speakers

Emotion and expertise: how listeners with formal music training use cues to perceive emotion

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