Diversified emotional responses are generally referred as the evidence of showing categorical perception of major and minor modes. Yet it is uncertain whether the categorical performance is independent to the emotion tagging. This study therefore adopted a direct measure with the proper controlled stimuli to reexamine the categorial nature of major and minor modes across ages. Results showed that except the group of male elderly, untrained participants in all three age groups performed better than chance in the categorisation task. Their above chance level performance might therefore suggests an implicit working of the conceptualisation of major and minor. Suggestion on hearing ability and item validity were also made so that the performance of elderly and the potential performance difference between sex can be further interpreted.
Balkwill,L. L., Thompson,W. F. (1999). A cross-cultural investigation of the perception of emotion in music: Psychophysical and cultural cues, Music Perception17, 43–64. DOI: 10.2307/40285811
2.
Barros,C. G., Swardfager,W., Moreno,S., Bortz,G., Ilari,B., Jackowski,A. P., ... Cogo-Moreira,H. (2017). Assessing music perception in young children: Evidence for and psychometric features of the M-Factor, Frontiers in Neuroscience11. DOI: 10.3389/fnins.2017.00018
3.
Baugh,B. (1993). Prolegomena to any aesthetics of rock music, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism51, 23–29. DOI: 10.2307/431967
4.
Bonetti,L., Costa,M. (2019). Musical mode and visual-spatial cross-modal associations in infants and adults, Musicae Scientiae23, 50–68. DOI: 10.1177/1029864917705001
5.
Briggs,S. R., Cheek,J. M. (1986). The role of factor analysis in the development and evaluation of personality scales, Journal of Personality54, 106–148. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-6494.1986.tb00391.x
6.
Brosschot,J. F., Verkuila,B., Thayerb,J. F. (2016). The default response to uncertainty and the importance of perceived safety in anxiety and stress: An evolution-theoretical perspective, Journal of Anxiety Disorders41, 22–34. DOI: 10.1016/j.janxdis.2016.04.012
7.
Cohen,A. J. (1990). Understanding musical soundtracks, Empirical Studies of the Arts8, 111–124. DOI: 10.2190/8Y6G-KTM8-VDX4-UHRW
8.
Cook,N. D., Fujisawa,T. X. (2006). The psychophysics of harmony perception: Harmony is a three-tone phenomenon, Empirical Musicology Review1, 106–126. DOI: 10.18061/1811/24080
9.
Crowder,R. G. (1984). Perception of the major/minor distinction: I. Historical and theoretical foundation, Psychomusicology4, 3–12. DOI: 10.1037/h0094207
10.
Cunningham,J. G., Sterling,R. S. (1988). Developmental change in the understanding of affective meaning in music, Motivation and Emotion12, 399–413. DOI: 10.1007/bf00992362
11.
Darwin,C. (2009). The Expression of the emotion in man and animals. England: Penguin Group.
12.
Damasio,A. (2018), The strange order of things. NY: Pantheon Books.
13.
Dobreva,M. S., O’Neill,W. E., Paige,G. D. (2011). Influence of aging on human sound localization, Journal of Neurophysiology105, 2471–2486. DOI: 10.1152/jn.00951.2010
14.
Fang,L., Shang,J., Chen,N. (2017). Perception of western musical modes: A Chinese study, Frontiers in Psychology8. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01905
15.
Fernández-Sotos,A., Fernández-Caballero,A., Latorre,J. M. (2016). Influence of tempo and rhythmic unit in musical emotion regulation, Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience10, 80. DOI: 10.3389/fncom.2016.00080
16.
Fritz,T., Jentschke,S., Gosselin,N., Sammler,D., Peretz,I., Turner,R., Friederici,A. D., Koelsch,S. (2009). Universal recognition of three basic emotions in music, Current Biology19, 573–576. DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2009.02.058
17.
Fujisawa,T., Cook,N. D. (2011). The perception of harmonic triads: An fMRI study, Brain Imaging and Behavior5, 109–125. DOI: 10.1007/s11682-011-9116-5
18.
Gagnon,L., Peretz,I. (2003). Mode and tempo relative contributions to “happy-sad” judgements in equitone melodies, Cognition and Emotion17, 25–40. DOI: 10.1080/02699930302279
Halpern,A. R., Bartlett,J. C., Dowling,W. J. (1998). Perception of mode, rhythm, and contour in unfamiliar melodies: Effects of age and experience, Music Perception: An Interdisciplinary Journal15, 335–355. DOI: 10.2307/40300862
21.
Heaton,P., Hermelin.B., Pring.L. (1999). Can children with autistic spectrum disorders perceive affect in music? An experimental investigation, Psychological Medicine29, 1405–1410. DOI: 10.1017/S0033291799001221
22.
Hevner,K. (1935). The affective character of the major and minor modes in music, American Journal of Psychology47, 103–118. DOI: 10.2307/1416710
23.
Howard,D., Rosen,S., Broad,V. (1992). Major/minor triad identification and discrimination by musically trained and untrained listeners, Music Perception: An Interdisciplinary Journal10, 205–220. DOI: 10.2307/40285607
24.
Huron,D. (2008). A comparison of average pitch height and interval size in major- and minor-key themes: Evidence consistent with affect-related pitch prosody, Empirical Musicology Review3, 59–63. DOI: 10.18061/1811/31940
25.
Kamien,R. (2008), Music: An appreciation (6th ed).
NY: McGraw-Hill.
26.
Kastner,M. P., Crowder,R. G. (1990). Perception of the major/minor distinction: IV. Emotional connotations in young children, Music Perception8, 189–202. DOI: 10.2307/40285496
27.
Kopec,J., Hillier,A., Frye,A. (2014). The valency of music has different effects on the emotional responses of those with autism spectrum disorders and a comparison group, Music Perception: An Interdisciplinary Journal31, 436–443. DOI: 10.1525/m2014.31.5.436
28.
Langmeyer,A., Guglhör-Rudan,A., Tarnai,C. (2012). What do music preferences reveal about personality? A cross-cultural replication using self-ratings and ratings of music samples, Journal of Individual Differences33, 119–130. DOI: 10.1027/1614-0001/a000082
29.
Leaver,A. M., Halpern,A. R. (2004). Effects of training and melodic features on mode perception, Music Perception: An Interdisciplinary Journal22, 117–143. DOI: 10.1525/m2004.22.1.117
30.
Lerdahl,F., Jackendoff,R. (1987), A generative theory of tonal music. USA: MIT Press.
31.
Levitin,D. J. (1994). Absolute memory for musical pitch: Evidence from the production of learned melodies, Perception and Psychophysics56, 414–423. DOI: 10.3758/BF03206733
32.
Levitin,D. J., Rogers,S. E. (2005). Absolute pitch: Perception, coding, and controversies, Trends in Cognitive Sciences9, 26–33. DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2004.11.007
33.
Liu,Y., Liu,G., Wei,D., Li,Q., Yuan,G., Wu,S., ... Zhao,X. (2018). Effects of musical tempo on musicians’ and non-musicians’ emotional experience when listening to music, Frontiers in Psychology9. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02118
34.
Lo,L. Y. (2015). Without conscious effort: The ability of non-tonal language speakers to discriminate lexical and non-lexical tones, Swiss Journal of Psychology75, 81–89. DOI: 10.1024/1421-0185/a000174
35.
Lo,L. Y., Li,W. O., Lee,L. P., Yeung,P. S. (2018). Running in fear: An investigation into the dimensional account of emotion in discriminating emotional expressions, Cognitive Process19, 505–515. DOI: 10.1007/s10339-018-0868-3
36.
Mak,B. S., Vera,A. H. (1999). The role of motion in children’s categorization of objects, Cognition71, B11–B21. DOI: 10.1016/S0010-0277(99)00019-0
37.
McCown,W., Keiser,R., Mulhearn,S., Williamson,D. (1997). The role of personality and gender in preference for exaggerated bass in music, Personality and Individual Differences23, 543–547. DOI: 10.1016/S0191-8869(97)00085-8
38.
Miller,G. F. (2000). Evolution of human music through sexual selection. In
WallinN. L.,
MerkerB., & BrownS. (Eds.), The origins of music (pp. 329–360). USA: MIT Press.
39.
Mitterschiffthaler,M. T., Fu,C. H., Dalton,J. A., Andrew,C. M., Williams,S. C. (2007). A functional MRI study of happy and sad affective states induced by classical music, Human Brain Mapping28, 1150–62. DOI: 10.1002/hbm.20337
40.
Murphy,M. P., Gates,G. A. (1997). Hearing loss: Does gender play a role?’, Medscape Women’s Health2, 2.
41.
Myers,N. D., Ahn,S., Jin,Y. (2011). Sample size and power estimates for a confirmatory factor analytic model in exercise and sport: A Monte Carlo approach, Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport82, 412–423. DOI: 10.1080/02701367.2011.10599773
42.
Nattiez,J. (1990), Music and discourse: Toward a semiology of music. USA: Princeton University Press.
43.
Pallesen,K. J., Brattico,E., Carlson,S. (2003). Emotional connotations of major and minor musical chords in musically untrained listeners, Brain and Cognition51, 188–190. DOI: 10.1016/S0278-2626(02)00541-9
44.
Parncutt,R. (2014). The emotional connotations of major versus minor tonality: One or more origins?Musicae Scientiae18, 324–353. DOI: 10.1177/1029864914542842
45.
Patterson,R. D., Nimmo-Smith,I., Weber,D. L., MilroyR. (1982). The deterioration of hearing with age: Frequency selectivity, the critical ratio, the audiogram, and speech threshold, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America72, 1788–1803. DOI: 10.1121/1.388652
46.
Pearson,J. D., Morrell,C. H., Gordon-Salant,S., Brant,L. J., Metter,E. J., Klein,L. L., Fozard,J. L. (1995). Gender differences in a longitudinal study of age-associated hearing loss, The Journal of Acoustical Society of America97, 1196–205. DOI: 10.1121/1.412231
47.
Peretz,I., Gaudreau,D., Bonnel,A. (1998). Exposure effects on music preference and recognition, Memory & Cognition26, 884–902. DOI: 10.3758/BF03201171
48.
Reybrouck,M. (1997). Gestalt concepts and music: Limitations and possibilities. In
LemanM. (Ed.), Music, Gestalt and computing. Studies in cognitive and systematic musicology (pp. 57–69). Berlin: Springer Verlag.
49.
Roberson,D., Davidoff,J., Davies,I. R., Shapiro,L. R. (2005). Color categories: Evidence for the cultural relativity hypothesis, Cognitive Psychology50, 378–411. DOI: 10.1016/j.cogpsych.2004.10.001
50.
Russell,J. A., Barrett,L. F. (1999). Core affect, prototypical emotional episodes, and other things called emotion: Dissecting the elephant, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology76, 805–819. DOI: 10.1037//0022-3514.76.5.805
51.
Shermer,M. (2011). The believing brain. USA: Brown Book Group.
52.
Szabo,A., Hoban,L. (2004). Psychological effects of fast-and slow-tempo music played during volleyball training in a national league team, International Journal of Applied Sports Sciences16, 39–48.
53.
Tagg,P., Clarida,B. (2003), Ten little title tunes: Towards a musicology of the mass media. New York: Mass Media Music Scholars’ Press. DOI: 10.1017/S0261143005220512
54.
Trainor,L.,
Heinmiller,B. (1998). The development of evaluative responses to music: Infants prefer to listen to consonance over dissonance, Development21, 77–88. DOI: 10.1016/S0163-6383(98)90055-8
55.
Waterhouse,J., Hudson,P., Edwards,B. (2010). Effects of music tempo upon submaximal cycling performance, Scandinavian Journal of Medicine Science in Sports20, 662–669. DOI: 10.1111/j.1600-0838.2009.00948.x
56.
Whitbourne,S. K. (1998). Physiological aspects of aging: Relation to identity and clinical implications. In
BellackA S. & HersenM. (Eds.), Clinical Geropsychology. Vol 7 (pp. 1–24). Oxford: Elsevier Science.
