Exam Questions

Question 1

1) Making reference to Huron’s model, explain how expectation has been proposed to elicit emotion during music listening.

Answer 1

ITPRA Expectation?

Question 2

2) Language and music are both similar and dissimilar: Discuss

Question 3

3) What do we currently understand about how music is represented in the brain? Illustrate your answer with reference to neuroimaging and/or patient studies.

Question 4

4) Whilst the claim that music evokes emotions is uncontroversial, the means by which this is achieved is less so. Discuss with reference to current theoretical models of musical emotion.

Question 5

5) Evaluate the claim that there are important commonalities between language and music.

Question 6

6) Can musical performance be studied using psychological approaches?

Question 7

7) Music psychologists have used the terms “musical building blocks” and “higher-order musical properties” to refer to different classes of musical phenomena. What are these and why are they important?

Question 8

8) Evaluate Pinker’s claim that music is “auditory cheesecake”

Question 9

9) What have neuroimaging and patient studies revealed about how music is organized in the brain?

Question 10

10) Does Huron’s ITPRA model provide a full account of musically evoked emotions?

Answer 10

NO!

Question 11

11) How well have psychologists elucidated the factors involved in musical creativity?

Question 12

12) It has been suggested that cognitive deficits and difficulties in understanding emotions will impair music perception in individuals with neurodevelopmental disorders. Evaluate this claim and illustrate your answer with findings from empirical studies of autism and Williams Syndrome.

Question 13

13) To what extent do music and language depend upon shared cognitive and neural resources?

Question 14

14) How well does Patel’s Transformative Technology of the Mind theory address outstanding questions about the evolutionary significance of music?

Question 15

15) What methods can scientists use to understand how music is processed in the brain? What are the strengths and limitation of each?

Question 16

16) The findings from studies into musical competencies in Infants have provided important insights into music perception in musically untrained adults. Discuss.

Question 17

17) How convincing are adaptionist theories of music?

Question 18

18) The study of “musical building blocks” and “higher-order musical structure” has been important in highlighting the complexity of musical information processing. Evaluate this statement in the context of research investigating perception of pitch, timbre and rhythm.

Question 19

19) Critically evaluate current theories of musical emotion.

Question 20

20) How well does Patel’s Shared Syntactic Resource Hypothesis advance our understanding of the relationship between music and language?

Question 21

21) How well does Patel’s Shared Syntactic Resource Hypothesis advance our understanding of the relationship between music and language?

Question 22

22) Music psychologists have become increasingly interested in identifying the cognitive processes involved in the emotional experience of listening to music. Discuss this statement with reference to the ITPRA and Multiple Mechanisms models.

Question 23

23) How have studies of music perception in infants and children contributed to debates about innate musical abilities in humans?

Question 24

24) How have psychologists attempted to explain expressivity in musical performance, and to what extent have they been successful?

Question 25

25) Since the time of Plato, philosophers have pondered on the relationship between music and language. To what extent have recent theoretical models and results from empirical studies increased our understanding of this relationship?

Question 26

26) How well do current theoretical models of music perception account for the listeners’ emotional responses to music?

Question 27

27) What evidence is there to suggest that pitch and rhythm are processed in different brain regions? Include definitions of pitch and rhythm in your answer.

Question 28

28) To what extent do cognitive and perceptual processing abnormalities characterising neurodevelopmental disorders impair appreciation of music?

Question 29

30) Can individual differences in musical creativity and skill be explained within a psychological framework?