Western music is characterized primarily by simple meters, but a number of other musical cultures, including Turkish, have both simple and complex meters. In Experiment 1, Turkish and American adults with and without musical training were asked to detect metrical changes in Turkish music with simple and complex meter. Musicians performed significantly better than nonmusicians, and performance was significantly better on simple meter than on complex meter, but Turkish listeners performed no differently than American listeners. In Experiment 2, members of (...) Turkish classical and folk music clubs who were tested on the same materials exhibited comparable sensitivity to simple and complex meters, unlike the American and Turkish listeners in Experiment 1. Together, the findings reveal important effects of musical training and culture on meter perception: trained musicians are generally more sensitive than nonmusicians, regardless of metrical complexity, but sensitivity to complex meter requires sufficient exposure to musical genres featuring such meters. (shrink)

Instead of the discrete emotions approach adopted by Juslin & Vll (J&V), the present perspective considers musical signals as functioning primarily to influence listeners in ways that are favorable to the signaler. Viewing music through the lens of social-emotional regulation fits with typical uses of music in everyday contexts and with the cross-cultural use of music for infant affect regulation.

Deliberate practice and experience may suffice as predictors of expertise, but they cannot account for spectacular achievements. Highly variable environmental and biological factors provide facilitating as well as constraining conditions for development, generating relative plasticity rather than absolute plasticity. The skills of virtuosos and idiots savants are more consistent with the talent account than with the deliberate-practice account.

I challenge Mehr et al.'s contention that ancestral mothers were reluctant to provide all the attention demanded by their infants. The societies in which music emerged likely involved foraging mothers who engaged in extensive infant carrying, feeding, and soothing. Accordingly, their singing was multimodal, its rhythms aligned with maternal movements, with arousal regulatory consequences for singers and listeners.

I review two recent books on music, both inspired by cognitive neuroscience but differing in most other respects. Isabelle Peretz, an expert in the cognitive neuroscience of music, describes how we perceive and produce music, as reflected in neural and behavioral re­sponsiveness. Her book is intended for general readers who are interested in music and curious about the science behind our musical nature-brains that are prepared for music and changed by active musical engagement. Lynn Helding, an expert in vocal perfor­mance (...) and pedagogy, draws on findings from psychology and neuroscience to inform her approach to music learning and teaching. Aimed at musicians, aspiring musicians, and those who teach them, her book focuses largely on the means of optimizing learning and skilled performance. (shrink)