Cognitive Processes in the Cultural Classification of Music

This research investigated the cognitive processes involved in classifying the cultural origin of music and how various musical features influence these processes. One hundred White-European (Western) listeners from the United Kingdom, the United States, New Zealand, and Australia listened to 48 ten-second music excerpts, comprising Western classical and Chinese traditional bowed-string music conveying happiness, sadness, calmness, and agitation. Western listeners classified each music excerpt as either Western or Chinese in a forced-choice task and rated their familiarity with the music. Measures of accuracy, sensitivity, response bias, and response time were obtained, while musical features were extracted for subsequent regression analyses. Listeners were more accurate in classifying Western music than Chinese music but responded more quickly when attempting to classify Chinese music than Western music. Listeners also demonstrated high sensitivity in distinguishing between Western and Chinese music, but with a liberal response bias to classify music as Western. Listeners exhibited reduced ability to distinguish between Western and Chinese music (low sensitivity) that was happy or agitated, with a strong response bias to classify such excerpts as Western. Musical features and culture-specific factors significantly predicted classification accuracy and response time for both Western and Chinese music. We discuss the roles of decision-making processes in the cultural classification of music, proposing that both heuristic (automatic) and reflective processes are involved. We also discuss potential mechanisms through which the emotional connotations of music impact upon its perceived cultural origins.