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Universal interpretations of vocal music
Despite the variability of music across cultures, some types of human songs share acoustic characteristics. For example, dance songs tend to be loud and rhythmic, and lullabies tend to be quiet and melodious. Human perceptual sensitivity to the behavioral contexts of songs, based on these musical fe...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
National Academy of Sciences
2023
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10500275/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37676911 http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2218593120 |
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author | Yurdum, Lidya Singh, Manvir Glowacki, Luke Vardy, Thomas Atkinson, Quentin D. Hilton, Courtney B. Sauter, Disa Krasnow, Max M. Mehr, Samuel A. |
author_facet | Yurdum, Lidya Singh, Manvir Glowacki, Luke Vardy, Thomas Atkinson, Quentin D. Hilton, Courtney B. Sauter, Disa Krasnow, Max M. Mehr, Samuel A. |
author_sort | Yurdum, Lidya |
collection | PubMed |
description | Despite the variability of music across cultures, some types of human songs share acoustic characteristics. For example, dance songs tend to be loud and rhythmic, and lullabies tend to be quiet and melodious. Human perceptual sensitivity to the behavioral contexts of songs, based on these musical features, suggests that basic properties of music are mutually intelligible, independent of linguistic or cultural content. Whether these effects reflect universal interpretations of vocal music, however, is unclear because prior studies focus almost exclusively on English-speaking participants, a group that is not representative of humans. Here, we report shared intuitions concerning the behavioral contexts of unfamiliar songs produced in unfamiliar languages, in participants living in Internet-connected industrialized societies (n = 5,516 native speakers of 28 languages) or smaller-scale societies with limited access to global media (n = 116 native speakers of three non-English languages). Participants listened to songs randomly selected from a representative sample of human vocal music, originally used in four behavioral contexts, and rated the degree to which they believed the song was used for each context. Listeners in both industrialized and smaller-scale societies inferred the contexts of dance songs, lullabies, and healing songs, but not love songs. Within and across cohorts, inferences were mutually consistent. Further, increased linguistic or geographical proximity between listeners and singers only minimally increased the accuracy of the inferences. These results demonstrate that the behavioral contexts of three common forms of music are mutually intelligible cross-culturally and imply that musical diversity, shaped by cultural evolution, is nonetheless grounded in some universal perceptual phenomena. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-10500275 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2023 |
publisher | National Academy of Sciences |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-105002752023-09-15 Universal interpretations of vocal music Yurdum, Lidya Singh, Manvir Glowacki, Luke Vardy, Thomas Atkinson, Quentin D. Hilton, Courtney B. Sauter, Disa Krasnow, Max M. Mehr, Samuel A. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A Biological Sciences Despite the variability of music across cultures, some types of human songs share acoustic characteristics. For example, dance songs tend to be loud and rhythmic, and lullabies tend to be quiet and melodious. Human perceptual sensitivity to the behavioral contexts of songs, based on these musical features, suggests that basic properties of music are mutually intelligible, independent of linguistic or cultural content. Whether these effects reflect universal interpretations of vocal music, however, is unclear because prior studies focus almost exclusively on English-speaking participants, a group that is not representative of humans. Here, we report shared intuitions concerning the behavioral contexts of unfamiliar songs produced in unfamiliar languages, in participants living in Internet-connected industrialized societies (n = 5,516 native speakers of 28 languages) or smaller-scale societies with limited access to global media (n = 116 native speakers of three non-English languages). Participants listened to songs randomly selected from a representative sample of human vocal music, originally used in four behavioral contexts, and rated the degree to which they believed the song was used for each context. Listeners in both industrialized and smaller-scale societies inferred the contexts of dance songs, lullabies, and healing songs, but not love songs. Within and across cohorts, inferences were mutually consistent. Further, increased linguistic or geographical proximity between listeners and singers only minimally increased the accuracy of the inferences. These results demonstrate that the behavioral contexts of three common forms of music are mutually intelligible cross-culturally and imply that musical diversity, shaped by cultural evolution, is nonetheless grounded in some universal perceptual phenomena. National Academy of Sciences 2023-09-07 2023-09-12 /pmc/articles/PMC10500275/ /pubmed/37676911 http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2218593120 Text en Copyright © 2023 the Author(s). Published by PNAS. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/This open access article is distributed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License 4.0 (CC BY-NC-ND) (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) . |
spellingShingle | Biological Sciences Yurdum, Lidya Singh, Manvir Glowacki, Luke Vardy, Thomas Atkinson, Quentin D. Hilton, Courtney B. Sauter, Disa Krasnow, Max M. Mehr, Samuel A. Universal interpretations of vocal music |
title | Universal interpretations of vocal music |
title_full | Universal interpretations of vocal music |
title_fullStr | Universal interpretations of vocal music |
title_full_unstemmed | Universal interpretations of vocal music |
title_short | Universal interpretations of vocal music |
title_sort | universal interpretations of vocal music |
topic | Biological Sciences |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10500275/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37676911 http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2218593120 |
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