AbstractsPsychology

Music appreciation and aesthetics have been subject to philosophical considerations and empirical investigations for decades. These scientific endeavours have been complicated by the fact that multifarious biological and cultural factors interact in all musical actions. The present thesis made use of behavioural methods and the event-related-potential technique (ERP) to investigate cognitive and neural determinants of music appreciation and aesthetics. At first, the structure and content of the knowledge-based concept of music aesthetics was examined on the basis of hundreds of verbal descriptions. In a second step, the developmental stage of school-aged children was investigated with regard to their recognition of music emotions, personal music preferences, and their concept of beauty. The event-related potential (ERP) method served to study whether long-term music preferences affect evaluative and cognitive judgments of music and whether expressive timing facilitates the neural processing of musical phrases. The results suggest that one s experience of beauty is at the core of aesthetic responses to music among both music experts and laymen. In line, by the age of six years, children have already developed a mental concept of beauty that resembles that of adults. They are able to recognise music emotions and to express their own music preferences. These early music preferences may become stable over a lifetime and later seem to modulate neural correlates of judgment processes during active music listening. Expressive timing, in turn, determines the neural processing of musical phrases even when these are unattended. In addition, expressive timing seems to facilitate the sequential organisation of melodies by directing listeners attention towards key musical events. The concept of beauty, music preference, music emotions, and the action of successfully structuring musical information constitute major elements of music appreciation. Thus, this thesis deepens our understanding of the conceptual and neural underpinnings of pleasurable musical experiences and allows extending and transferring current general models of aesthetic processing to music-specific demands. Musiikkimieltymyksiä ja estetiikkaa on lähestytty tieteessä sekä filosofian että kokeellisen tutkimuksen avulla. Koska nykykäsityksen mukaan kaikki musiikkiin liittyvä toiminta perustuu sekä biologisiin että opittuihin tekijöihin, on alan tutkimus suurten haasteiden edessä. Tässä väitöskirjassa musiikkimieltymyksiä ja esteettisiä arvioita tutkittiin hyödyntämällä useita lähestymistapoja. Ensimmäiseksi selvitettiin musiikin esteettisten arvioiden käsitehierarkiaa vapaan assosiaation menetelmällä, jossa aikuiset koehenkilöt listasivat musiikkiin liittyviä adjektiiveja. Seuraavaksi kouluikäisten lasten musiikkiemootioita, mieltymyksiä ja kauneuskäsitteitä tutkittiin innovatiivisella pelinomaisella tutkimusalustalla. Lisäksi kahdessa tutkimuksessa aivojen tapahtumasidonnaisia jännitevasteita käytettiin osoittamaan, kuinka eri musiikkityyleihin kohdistuvat…