Abstract Titles, Classical Music: The Impact of Music Training Experience on the Perception of Titles Across Musical Works From Different Time Periods

Titles play a crucial role in shaping perception in visual art, but their influence in auditory art remains underexplored. This study used two experiments to investigate how music training and the presence of music influence the perception of music titles. Experiment 1 asked participants to judge titles without accompanying music clips. The results showed that music majors showed a strong preference for concrete titles, likely due to their psychological proximity to music concepts, while this effect was absent in the no musical training group. Experiment 2 introduced music clips (classical and modern) to explore how music types affect title perception. The results revealed that abstract titles were favored for classical music, which was perceived as temporally distant, whereas concrete titles were preferred for modern music, which was perceived as closer and more tangible. These findings provide preliminary evidence that psychological distance, as proposed by Construal Level Theory (CLT), interacts with musical expertise and music style to shape title perception, offering new insights into the interpretation of auditory art.