Time (BST)	Time (EDT)	Event
Wednesday	20th May
12:30	07.30	Technical Check
13.00	08.00	Welcome
13.15	08.15	Invited Lecture 1-1
14.15	​09.15	Lecture 1-2
14.45	09.45	Posters
15.30	10.30	Invited ​Lecture 2-1
16.30	11.30	Lecture 2-2
17.00	12.00	End of Day
Thursday	21st May
10.00	05.00	Technical Check
10.30	05.30	Invited ​Lecture 3-1
11.30	06.30	Lecture 3-2
12.00	07.00	Break
12.15	07.15	Invited ​Lecture 4-1
13.15	08.15	Lecture 4-2
13.45	08.45	Break
14.15	09.15	Invited ​Lecture 5-1
15.15	10.15	Lecture 5-2
15.45	10.45	Break
16.00	11.00	Discussion Panel
17.00	12.00	End of Day

BST (British Summer Time; GMT/UTC +1)
EDT (Eastern Daylight Time; GMT/UTC -4)

POSTERS

Invited Lecture 1-1
Marcus Pearce

Queen Mary University of London, UK

How does expectation influence aesthetic experience of music?
Abstract: Expectation has been hypothesised to play a variety of different roles in the aesthetics of music. However, these roles have not been clearly differentiated either theoretically in terms of underlying psychological mechanisms or with respect to the available empirical evidence, which is not as extensive as one would expect. In this presentation, I will attempt to delineate the different ways in which expectation, as a psychological process, might influence aesthetic experience in principle and use this characterisation both to make sense of the existing empirical evidence and propose promising directions for further research.

Lecture 1-2
Leah Fostick

Ariel University, Israel

The effect of music tempo and tonality on speech perception
The emotional state of the individual affects its cognitive performance in tasks such as memory, information processing, judgment, and attitudes. Music affects the emotional state of the listener; major tonality is interpreted as ‘happy’, while minor tonality as ‘sad’. In the current study, we tested whether tonality-inflicted emotional state can affect basic perceptual performance, such as speech perception. Thirty participants were asked to repeat consonant-vowel-consonant words. The words were presented with background music composed of major and minor scales, in fast and slow tempo, in signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of 0, -5, -8, -12, and -15. The melodies were composed and rated with different valence by Caldwell et al. (2015). Each melody repeated in four different permutations: major, minor, fast, and slow, creating major-fast, major-slow, minor-fast, and minor-slow combinations. The data showed main effect for SNR, tempo, and tonality. Higher accuracy rate was obtained for better (less negative) SNR, for slow than fast tempo, and for major than minor tonality. The SNR and tempo effect probably reflect the influence of energetic masking on auditory perception. However, the tonality effect, found both for fast and slow tempo, suggests that tonality-inflicted emotional state affects speech perception, with better perception of ‘happy’ (major) than ‘sad’ (minor). This should be regarded both theoretically and clinically. Theoretically, it points to sensitivity of perceptual mechanisms to emotional state. Clinically, the emotional state of the individual should be taken into account when testing its perceptual ability.

Invited Lecture 2-1
David Huron

The Ohio State University, USA

Emotion: Insights from Ethology
Existing theories of emotion are plagued by a number of problems. People commonly smile when stressed, laugh or giggle when in a state of fear, and weep at weddings. Although anger is usually regarded as a negative emotion, research suggests that people enjoy the feeling of righteous indignation. Current confusion has led to widespread dissatisfaction with evolutionary-oriented theories and a concommitant appeal of social constructivist views.
In this presentation I describe recent breakthroughs applying ethological signaling theory to emotion. The purpose of an ethological signal is to transform the behavior of the observer. Accordingly, emotion researchers have been looking at the wrong person: the common denominator in affective displays is not the emotional state of the displayer, but the evoked behavior of the observer. I show how an ethological approach is able to account for many apparent puzzles and paradoxes, such as the weeping of beauty pageant winners. In addition, I outline the implications of an ethological approach for better understanding music-related emotion. Compared with existing theories, I suggest that ethological theory offers a more comprehensive, parsimonious, and biologically plausible account of emotion and affect-related displays and behaviors.

Lecture 2-2
Jenny M Groarke

Queen’s University Belfast, UK

Comparing the affect regulating effects of music listening and music video watching
The prevalence of chronic stress and anxiety is of growing concern. There is substantial evidence that music listening is an effective method of regulating negative affect. Video streaming sites, such as, YouTube have become the most common method of music consumption. Yet, there have been no studies on the affect regulating effect of music video watching. In Study 1, 62 participants were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: music listening, music video watching, or an active control condition [non-music video watching] (18–70 years, M = 26.08, SD = 12.91). Negative affect was induced using a speech preparation and arithmetic task, followed by music listening/video watching or control. State anxiety, heart rate, and blood pressure were measured at baseline, post-induction, and post-intervention. Study 2 was an online experiment employing the same design without physiological measures (N = 71, 18-73 years, M = 26.46, SD = 13.75). A 3x3 mixed ANOVA revealed a significant main effect of time. The results of both studies support previous research on the anxiolytic effect of music listening and show for the first time that music video watching also reduces anxiety following a stressor. Yet, the results indicate other activities such as watching non-music videos may have similar benefits.

Invited Lecture 3-1
Stefan Koelsch

University of Bergen, Norway

Brain-correlates of Music-evoked Emotions
Music is a universal feature of human societies, partly owing to its power to evoke strong emotions and influence moods. During the past decade, the investigation of the neural correlates of music-evoked emotions has been invaluable for the understanding of human emotion. Functional neuroimaging studies on music and emotion show that music can modulate activity in brain structures that are known to be crucially involved in emotion, such as the amygdala, nucleus accumbens, hypothalamus, hippocampus, insula, cingulate cortex and orbitofrontal cortex. The potential of music to modulate activity in these structures has important implications for the use of music in the treatment of psychiatric and neurological disorders.

Lecture 3-2
Eline A. Smit

Western Sydney University, Australia

Affect perception of musical harmony in Papua New Guinea: Differing levels of exposure to Western music impact associations between musical harmony and affect
Music is strongly connected to emotions, but how and to what extent this is cross-cultural is widely debated. One particular discussion is the association between emotional responses and particular musical features and how this is mediated by culture-specific exposure. In order to address this question, studies have often used Western musical stimuli to test Western-enculturated participants. A few studies have tested the relationship between music and emotion using participants from remote areas with limited exposure to Western music. But, as yet, there is no consensus as to the ability of music to communicate consistently across cultures. We tested participants from different cultural and geographic backgrounds from a remote area in Papua New Guinea, with differing levels of exposure to Western music and its cultural context to examine whether associations between specific musical features and emotions are learned through longitudinal exposure or might be cross-cultural. Participants from Papua New Guinea and Sydney listened to pairs of intervals, melodies, triads and cadences in a forced-choice experiment such that participants identified which of the two stimuli in a pair was the happy or the finished one. We found very strong evidence that roughness, harmonicity, spectral entropy, mode (major/minor) and average pitch affect ratings for the Sydney participants. Strong evidence was found for some, but not all, features for the Papua New Guinean participants. This suggests that the effect of psychoacoustic features on affective ratings of musical fragments is not culture-specific, but that its strength might be dependent on familiarity with a musical system.

Invited Lecture 4-1
Joydeep Bhattacharya

Goldsmiths University of London, UK

How Music Influences Decision - Investigation from Crossmodal Perspectives
We take decisions at every step in our lives. It ranges from mundane perceptual decisions to complex cognitive ones. In this talk, I will discuss and present experimental findings on how brief exposure to music could influence various types of decisions. Specifically, I will show how musical emotions crucially influence how we perceive faces, judge complex pictures, process words, and even judge brightness. I will argue that music, even short excerpts, can indeed influence a wide range of decision-making process, and such crossmodal transfer of musical emotions are largely implicit, i.e. occurring under our level of conscious awareness.

Lecture 4-2
Jasmine Tan

Goldsmiths University of London, UK

Unpacking the Neural Correlates of Flow Experience
Flow is a highly positive experience occurring during an intense engagement in a challenging and enjoyable activity. Although this psychological construct was introduced decades ago, its underlying neural correlates are not properly characterised yet. Further, most relevant research has considered tasks (like mental arithmetic) that are less engaging and conducted in the controlled environment of a lab, do not reflect the conditions under which flow is usually experienced. Here, we suggest an alternative framework to study flow by studying musicians, who are engaged in a complex activity they find intrinsic enjoyment and meaning in, and argue that this represents a valid, if technically challenging, opportunity to collect neurophysiological data under conditions conducive to flow and reflect an experience more recognisable as the optimal experience often described as flow. We conducted several independent electrophysiological experiments on professional musicians’ (N=88) self-induced flow state during music performance. Brain responses in the post-flow state, as compared to the post-non-flow state, were associated with lower delta (1-4 Hz) and increased upper alpha (10-12 Hz) and beta (15-30 Hz) power. Effects were predominantly observed over prefrontal brain regions. A neural index of interoception, or how the brain perceives visceral signals, also differed after musicians played music that induced flow versus music that did not. These findings offer novel insight into the neural mechanisms underlying flow experience. Finally, this state of effortless attention and high performance has been described in remarkably similar terms across a wide range of activities. Therefore, as a proof of concept, we conducted a pilot experiment on climbers in action on a climbing wall outside the laboratory environment and discuss some initial findings. These altogether contribute to the broader debate on domain-general vs domain-specificity of flow experience.

Invited Lecture 5-1
Andrea R Halpern

Bucknell University, USA

Musical emotions across the adult lifespan
Musical audiences and consumers often include older adults, but very little research has examined emotional response to music in older age. Healthy ageing provides an interesting paradox to frame such questions: On the one hand, natural biological changes result in slowing and performance declines in some aspects of executive functioning. On the other hand, older adults have accumulated a lifetime of experience, including exposure to music, and in generating emotional and aesthetic reactions.  In this talk I’ll examine several aspects of emotional responding in older compared to younger adults, including the induction of emotion, generation of expectations, and aesthetic judgements. The primary focus will be on healthy ageing but will also include some discussion of these responses in dementia.

Lecture 5-2
Heather Rolfe

​University of Kent, UK

Causes and Consequences of Anger and Disgust in Response to Controversial Music Types
Media reports throughout history suggest that music is frequently condemned using language associated with the moral emotions of anger and disgust. However, relatively little empirical evidence connecting music to these emotions exists. Exploring condemnation of music in the context of the causes and consequences of these emotions may provide greater understanding of both reactions towards controversial music, and the underlying mechanisms of the emotions themselves. Four studies were carried out: Studies 1 and 2 (ns = 90, 94) used open-ended, exploratory methodology prompting participants to discuss times they had experienced anger or disgust in response to music, with the responses then coded for content. Participants in Study 1 listed a large variety of immoral content types during their discussion of disgusting music. This was replicated in Study 2, where participants who described anger responses to music also commonly mentioned personally-relevant harmful content. The latter two studies (ns = 106, 85) used quantitative methods prompting participants with different forms of immoral or personally offensive content to explore how this content elicited anger and disgust and what action tendencies this motivated. Results suggest a consistent pattern of disgust in relation to harmful content, with resulting action tendencies towards music being determined by what within the music is objectionable. These findings will be explored in the context of current theories of emotion and action tendencies, alongside future pathways for this research.