Experimental Researches On The Characteristics Of Attention In Listening To Music

Attention allocation in listening to music has always been one of the most important subjects in the field of cognitive psychology.Attention is an important concomitant in musical activities,whether for music professionals or general admirers.Therefore,they are of great significance,whether they pay attention to the characteristics of listening to music and the appreciation of music and the creation of music.The environment provides us with a great deal of stimulation.Some stimuli are important,while others are less important or even meaningless.Therefore,it is necessary to process the stimuli that surround us.Important conscious behavior is the selection of important information that excludes irrelevant stimuli in our daily life.The status of attention is rather special in psychology.The human cognitive system is regarded as an information processing system that is limited by the channel capacity.People can only select important information from many senses and process them,and then select some information to be transported to the long-term memory area through the hippocampus.Extract certain information from memory and react to stimuli in the environment,as necessary.The researchers classified attention from different dimensions,and one of the most basic categories was to divide attention into three categories: selective attention,distributive attention(or distributed attention)and continuous attention.Selective attention is the individual choice of a note in two or more than two kinds of stimuli presented simultaneously;distribution of attention is theindividual at the same time of two or more than two kinds of stimulation or attention,attention distribution in different activities;sustained attention refers to in a certain period of time to maintain in an object of knowledge or activity.In the field of music psychology,the researchers used parallel,double melody staggered or polyphonic music fragments mature as stimuli on the distribution of attention and selective attention of the two types of attention were studied,to reveal the general regularity of the distribution of attention.But the current study did not achieve the same conclusion,the listener is able to notice two simultaneous melodies,the researchers hold different views,a view that the listener can pay attention to the two and melody,but the quality of attention by various internal factors as well as the audience melody of their existing knowledge and experience;the other one view is that the listener to notice two simultaneous cantus,only the overall perception of the two melody(auditory Gestalt).In this study,two auditory attention experiments were used to demonstrate the above problems.Experiment 1 aims to investigate the distributive attention of subjects and the main factors that influence attention quality through melodic error detection.In this experiment,take two familiar and simultaneously played song melody fragments as stimuli,with 2(Major: Music Major / Non Music Major)×3(Tonal Relations: Same key/ Near Key / Far Key)two factors mixed design,professional is between variables,tonal relations are internal variables.The purpose of this experiment was to examine the influence of the profession and tonal relations on the divided attention.Two familiar songs in different combinations and presented to the subjects,each of which contain two change melody notes(error tone),participants also note two cantus and find out the wrong tone,and then quickly respond to button.Experiment 2 used 2(Major: Music Major / Non Music Major)×3(Tonal Relations: Same key/ Near Key / Far Key))two factor mixed design,whether professional and tonal relations will affect the distribution of attention.Stimuli and Experiment 2 in Experiment 1,the same,the difference is that only the experimental procedures were required to pay attention to the two melody in a target and the melody in the error tone judgment,then press a button to respond quickly.The conclusions of this study are as follows:(1)It is difficult for both musicians and non musicians to pay attention to two melodies at the same time.(2)The relationship of tonality does not have a significant impact on the hit of false sound,but it has a significant impact on false positive rate,and has more influence on musicmajors than non-musicians majors.(3)In the attention of two simultaneous melodies,the processing strategies adopted by music majors and non musicians are different.Music professional subjects tend to make the overall perception significantly related to perceived effect and melody between harmonious level;non music professional subjects tend to simplify the task difficulty(the distribution of attention is simplified to selective attention).The limitations and shortcomings of this study are as follows: first,attention is a complex psychological state which has ups and downs and is easily affected by factors such as mood and time.Based on the current technical conditions,it is difficult to closely control these conditions,and therefore have a certain impact on the results of the experiment.Two,in the allocation of attention task,high register melodic lines attract more attention.Although the present study excluded the factors that might have attracted more attention(e.g.,repetition,novelty,masking effect)in the existing studies,the specific reasons needed to be further investigated.