Dear cognitive brownbag members,
Dr. Carol Krumhansl, Cornell University, will give 2 talks in the Psychology Dept at McGill on Friday Sept 18: abstracts are included follow.
The first talk is a Hebb colloquium
Sept 18, 3:30pm, Macintyre Medical Bldg Room 504
"Music and Personal Memories"
The second talk is a morning seminar:
Sept 18, 10am, Room S2/2 Stewart Biology Bldg
"Reflections on Music and Language: Notable Differences and Similarities"
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Music and Personal Memories
Abstract: Autobiographical memories are disproportionately recalled for events in late adolescence and early adulthood, a phenomenon called the reminiscence bump (Krumhansl & Zupnick, Psych Sci, 2013). Our previous work reported the results of a survey documenting intergenerational transfer of musical preferences from parents to contemporary young adults.
The parents' music (from their own late adolescence and early adulthood, the typical "reminiscence bump") was associated with positive emotions and strong autobiographical memories in their children. In my talk, I will report the results of a new survey using 100 years of top hits and 6 decades of music listeners. We trace how listening niches have changed over time, where listening niches are characterized by the decade of the music, the age of the listener, with whom they are listening, the context, and the music media. All generations listened to their parents' music with their parents and also exhibit the typical "reminiscence bump". However, earlier generations, unlike contemporary young adults, listened to very different music with their friends growing up than with their parents. In addition to generational differences, preferences were also found for the music of the 40's, 60's, and 80's that might be attributable in part to developments in music technologies in those decades. This work suggests that music transmitted from generation to generation shapes autobiographical memories, preferences, and emotional responses, a phenomenon we call cascading reminiscence bumps.
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Reflections on Music and Language: Notable Differences and Similarities
Abstract: In this informal seminar, I would like to reflect on one notable feature that differs between music and language and one that suggests a deep parallel between them. Exact repetitions are far more prevalent in music than in written or spoken language. I will suggest possible reasons for this difference, drawing on Lisa Margulis' On Repeat and other sources, and present the results of a recent experiment on repetition in Stravinsky's Symphonies of Wind Instruments. In contrast, stuctural representations of both music and language require links between non-adjacent elements, i.e. long-distance dependencies. I will review a theoretical proposal by Eugene Narmour that repetition directs attention to larger-scale relationship and describe an experiment lending empirical support. I will also describe Fred Lerdahl's prolongation trees and their experimental tests, and hope to stimulate discussion of linguistic parallels.
