Session Titles

Symposium: Psychological and Artistic Approaches to Children's View of Art

Paper Session: Symbolization Processes, Creativity and Aesthetic Values

Symposium: Method, Study and Teaching of Literature

Paper Session: Psychology of Literary Creation and Fruition. I

Paper Session: Psychology of Musical Composition and Listening. I

Paper Session: Psychology of Musical Composition and Listening. II

Symposium: Computational Content Analysis: If, When, Why, What

Demonstration Session on Computational Content Analysis
 

Abstracts

Monday, September 21

Gustav Theodor Fechner Address

Factors of Prestige in Art Appreciation

Robert Francés
Departement de Psychologie, Université de Paris-X, Nanterre, France

Three scenes of comedies were presented to groups of subjects of the same
age but of different level of social background (either school students of
terminal level or young office, manual or agricultural workers). Each
session was presented as a radio referendum. Each scene was attributed
either to a well-known author or to a false name, or was without a name (in
the control group). The subjects had to give a mark to each scene. The
results were as follows:
1. The attribution of each scene to a famous author results in a
significant mean enhancement as compared to the other attributions.
2. The effect of the author's fame results in a) a contrast effect: when
the best scene (according to the control group) is attributed to a famous
author, its mean score is enhanced and the scores of the scenes attributed
to unknown authors are lowered; b) a compensation effect: when the worse
scene is attributed to a famous author, the other scenes are also
overestimated.
3. This effect is less constant and less marked in the groups of office or
manual workers.
4. If one compares the variations in the scoring of scenes and the author's
rank scores, one can observe that the attribution to the famous author does
not automatically result in a high ranking for him: while he is generally
well ranked, his ranking is to some extent modified by the quality of the
attributed scene.
 
 

Symposium: Psychological and Artistic Approaches to Children's View of Art

Department of Psychology of Developmental and Socialization Processes,
1st University of Rome, "La Sapienza", Rome, Italy

Overview. Psychological and Artistic Approaches to Children's View of Art

Anna Silvia Bombi* and Mimmo Roselli**

  *  Department of Psychology of Developmental and Socialization Processes,
1st University of Rome, "La Sapienza", Rome, Italy
**  Bagno a Ripoli (Florence), Italy
 

The aim of this symposium is to bring together psychological and artistic
accounts of children's comprehension and production of visual art, two
perspectives that are usually separate from each other. We will present
psychological studies about children's understanding of pictorial
representation and appreciation of artistic style, but we will also provide
field documentation of how artistic works can be realized by artists and
children working together. Experimental psychology helps us to reach a
clearer understanding of how children's ideas about drawing and style, and
art education can shape children's perception of pictures; on the other
hand, artists' reports enhance our awareness of how interactive artistic
experiences can affect children's understanding of art via direct
production attempts.
Papers will be presented by psychologists, art educators and artists, all
dealing with the key issues of the children's responding and producing
pictures from their different points of view. Anna Silvia Bombi and Paola
De Fabritiis (University of Rome "La Sapienza", Italy) will discuss the
problems relating to the empirical study of children's theories of
pictures. Giuliana Pinto (University of Florence, Italy) will present data
about the development of children's metaknowledge about strategies and
evaluations of their own drawings. Tara Callaghan and Michael Mac Farlane
(St. Francis Xavier University, Antigonish, Canada) will present data about
children's sensitivity to artistic style at different ages.  Pen Dalton
will illustrate the role of art education in child development and
identity. Mimmo Roselli will show the steps of creating a painting with
children in a borderline context (meninos de rua in a brasilian favela),
while Lorenzo Pezzatini will illustrate the emerging of children's artistic
creativity in the context of formal education. We hope to approach, through
the connection of these different perspectives, a deeper understanding of
how children become adults able to create and to appreciate the
significance of a work of art.
 
 
 

Can We Understand Children's Understanding of Art?

Anna Silvia Bombi and Paola De Fabritiis

Department of Psychology of Developmental and Socialization Processes, 1st
University of Rome, "La Sapienza", Rome, Italy
 

Empirical studies of "children's theories of art" are not numerous and are
barely comparable with each other due to the differences in the subjects'
age range, the kind of data collected and, above all, in the definitions of
art assumed by operational criteria for data collection (see Butterworth,
1977; Freeman, 1995; Gardner & Winner, 1976; Goodnow et al., 1986; Taunton
1980); and there have been few, if any, attempts to examine children's
abilities to modify their drawings according to their ideas on art. In
searching for new procedures to approach these problems,we carried out a
qualitative study with 16 subjects (ages 9 to 13 years old), who were
examined from a variety of points of view: production of drawings with
"communicative" vs. "artistic" goals, judgement of conventional and
unconventional drawings, in-depth interviews on artistic merit and
subjective appreciation of pictures by Miro and Chagall, with different
degrees of visual realism. Results show the extreme difficulties in
bringing children to transpose their ideas on art into their own pictorial
productions (even if tentatively), while their reasoning on selected
stimuli, both ordinary drawings and artistic paintings with different
degrees of realism, appears as a viable access to their implicit theories
about art and possibly their cultural sources.
 
 
 

Children's Metaknowledge of Drawing

Giuliana Pinto

Department of Psychology, University of Florence, Florence, Italy
 

The present study was designed to investigate children's metaknowledge of
drawing. The analysis of verbal reports produced by subjects who express
their thoughts while engaged in cognitive activities is well known as one
of the tools that allowed psychologists to explore cognitive processing
(Ericsson & Simon, 1980; Pressley & Afflerbach, 1995), but up to now there
has been little research in the domain of drawing. We assumed that a newly
created metacognitive questionnaire could be a valuable way to discover how
children develop a theory of pictorial representation. In our research 50
children, 5, 7, and 9 years old, were given two tasks: 1) to draw a person,
thinking aloud about their drawing; 2) to answer questions about strategies
and goals of the drawing process, and about the pictorial product. The
results revealed: a) differences between strategic and evaluative
metaknowledge; b) age differences in awareness of drawing. In short, we
found that age and type of task influence metacognitive performance on
drawing. Educational and theoretical relevance of the results is discussed.
 
 
 
 

An Attentional Analysis of Children's Sensitivity to Artistic Style in Paint=
ings

Tara C. Callaghan  and  Michael J. MacFarlane

Department of Psychology, St. Francis Xavier University, Antigonish, Canada
 

This study investigated the claim that children are not able to judge
artistic style when it conflicts with subject matter cues in paintings.
Using methodological controls not employed previously, 6 and 9 year old
children and adults were asked to judge which member of a pair of paintings
looked like it was painted by the same painter as the target in a
matching-to-sample task. Subject-matter matches were either not possible
(control), or possible but in conflict with style choices (experimental).
Discriminability of style and subject-matter differences were varied.
Performance was poor for all ages when style differences were of low
indiscriminability and subject-matter varied; otherwise, it was high
(control). Irrelevant variation of subject-matter was more detrimental if
differences on that dimension were highly discriminable (experimental).
Even the youngest children could make style matches and could do so even
when a subject-matter match was also possible, suggesting that they are
sensitive to artistic style and can focus on that dimension in the face of
irrelevant variation on other dimensions. The results are discussed as they
relate to earlier claims that children are not able to judge artistic style
and to the implications for training that follow from those claims.
 
 
 

Construction of Identity through Art Education

Penelope Dalton

Department of Art Education, University of Central England, Birmingham, UK
 

The notion of the child that we have inherited in art education is one that
has been based on modernist psychological accounts which reflect the
Enlightenment's rational and romantic modes of being: Behaviourist and,
later, cognitive psychologies emphasised rational and logical "scientific"
modes of art education, whilst humanistic psychologies, which were more
concerned with the expression of the inner creative self, became part of
the structuring and legitimising modes informing progressive and romantic
strands of art education.
What I would want to argue in this paper is that both the rational and
romantic models of art education, and the notion of the child they adopt,
are two sides of the same coin, and that there are now different ways of
thinking identity which undermine this notion of the unified, developing
child of modernist psychology.
I would like to give a brief account of the way that social constructionist
and discursive psychologies, studies in lifestyle and performance and new
approaches from film and art history suggest versions of identity that are
not fixed but are continually being produced in and through discursive
social practices such as education, media and art. These theories can serve
to illuminate the part that art education plays in the construction of
postmodern identities.
 
 
 

Por Uma Favela - Rio De Janeiro

Mimmo Roselli

Bagno a Ripoli (Florence), Italy
 

The project presented here, "Por uma favela", starts from my work, as a
painter, on the concept of limit: maximum reduction of the pictorial
material (only using layering techniques), characterized by lightness and
transparency; at the same time stratification and a great richness of
detail; spaces are furrowed by signs, that cross each other like a walk in
a vast landscape. There is no loss of history, no loss of variety, no loss
of complexity, even if there is an apparent absence of represented things.
Based on these pictorial options, a project lasting three months was
carried out in Rio de Janeiro with a group of 16 children (9-13 years old),
living in a favela, none of whom had any experience in painting. We worked
on the surrounding wall of the local health center terrace that people use
as the square of the favela, and we produced a collective painting, each
participant planning and carrying out an individual picture (37 linear
meters of painting carried out with mural painting techniques). The
different steps of the project will be illustrated, focussing on children's
interaction both with the artist and with the process of painting.
 
 
 

Canalefilo

Lorenzo Pezzatini

Florence, Italy
 

Lorenzo Pezzatini received a commission from the Municipality of Carpi
(Modena) for one of their Artist in Presence Projects, for two kindergarten
schools of the city. For two weeks (one in each school) the artist
transformed himself into a special kind of teacher, making his presence
highly visible by every day constructing meters and meters of his "Filo".
The "Filo" - a spiky thread made of acrylic paint in primary colors, which
Pezzatini created in 1977 - gradually became the communication link
between the artist and the whole school. The children, inspired by the Filo
and assisted by the teachers, produced a large number of drawings,
paintings and stories, all of which show remarkable imagination and beauty.
=46or a finale, the artist once again transformed himself, this time into a
mime artist in a puppet theater, giving the children and the teachers his
personal Filo-story and interacting with a TV screen showing his alter ego
anchor man.
 
 
 

Paper Session: Symbolization Processes, Creativity and Aesthetic Values

Department of Psychology, John Jay College, New York City University,
 New York, USA
 

Revelation, Consolation and Repair in the Creations of Children in Play Therapy

Constance Katz

William Alanson White Institute of Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis and
Psychology, New York, USA
 

I shall make the argument that using the child's creative expressions
solves several problems inherent in working with children: they resist
talking about painful experiences; the younger the child, the less able
he/she is to verbalize in the logical realm without the intrusion of
fantasy; they are influenced in their reports by their impression of what
the adult wants to hear; they are narcissistically vulnerable; they have
loyalties to families that prevent them from describing their lives and
feelings openly.
I will offer some examples from my work with=20children to show how one may
use artistic creations (drawings, creation of objects or spaces, and
dramatic play), for the purpose of psychotherapeutic gain. I will discuss
three aspects of using creative productions with children. The first is
discovering what the problem is from the point of view of the child
(revelation). Understanding the problem from the child's position must
include some notion of the child's inner motivation and his feelings, so we
know what conditions and issues to address both with him, and within his
milieu. The second aspect involves helping the child find some way of
accepting things that cannot be changed in the present, and some hope that
there could be change for the better in the future (consolation). The third
aspect mingles the therapist's creativity with that of the child in that
both therapist and child may respond to the child's creative productions in
order to find alternative ways of functioning or experiencing (repair).
 
 
 

Art Therapy, Play Therapy and Aesthetic Reverberations of Psychological Changes

Valeria Biasi and Paolo Bonaiuto

Department of Psychology, 1st University of Rome, "La Sapienza", Rome, Italy
 

For some time clinical observations, psychodynamic reflections and
systematic research have confirmed that processes of mental representation
and symbolization allow substituting concrete actions with forms of
behavior that take place in a virtual environment. For this purpose,
several virtual environments are available to human beings: imagination,
dreams, verbal description, non-verbal depiction; including the activities
that have their aesthetic culmination in the various arts: from painting to
theatre, from music to dance, from architecture to cinema and electronic
installations...
Although the reciprocal relationships between representational activities
and promotion of cultural values are rather complex, a general effect of
these activities is to permit socially compatible satisfaction of
individual needs, peaceful cohabitation between persons, productive
collaboration: in other words, the processes of civilization (Freud, 1930;
Klein, 1930, 1950; Segal, 1973). In this regard, papers delivered by
Constance Katz (1998) and James Levin (1995, 1998) give further information
on the related theoretical and technical background.
Besides the recording of images and events and the communication of
meanings, the representational activities that lie at the heart of various
arts allow the experience of beauty and aesthetic emotion as an important
result. This reward is very important for motivating subjects to the
representation itself and deserves further psychological explanations. The
gaining of aesthetic experience is due to the fact that the subject
accesses forms of simultaneous satisfaction of personal needs that would be
difficult or impossible in the real world, at least without serious damage
to others and to oneself; as happens, instead, in cases of violent
behaviour or in other forms of peverse behaviour.
Play therapy and art therapy use the above-mentioned principles and
mechanisms to provide periodic and frequent opportunities for pleasant
experiences, reinforcing motivation, and also, above all, to favour the
gradual development of alternative channels of satisfaction, centred on
virtual environments. These forms of therapy not only encourage creative
activities, but also the appreciation of art as an effect of the investment
of interest in the art world. Therefore, we consider it of great interest
also for empirical aesthetics to trace the aesthetic reverberations of
psychological changes promoted by play therapy in children and, more
generally, by art therapies also in adults. Besides the investigations of
systematic research carried out until now in this field, a longitudinal
study of individual cases is useful, followed up in their development
during a whole cycle of treatment sessions.
We directly observed the development of graphic-pictorial representations,
which parallels the improvement of concrete behavior in a three-year-old
child treated with play-therapy in 50 bi-weekly sessions for a 7-month
period. Various may be listed among the technical interventions carried
out, the efficacy of which we checked. Aggressiveness was progressively
channelled in a constructive way, by developing symbolic representation
abilities and techniques for the expression and processing of drives, as an
alternative to open interpersonal attack (Bonaiuto & Biasi, 1997). To
achieve this, from the first session, the child had at his disposal
abundant material for play activity and, in particular, for non-verbal
depiction through colours, textures, shapes and even three-dimensional
forms. Also, non-verbal expression was linked to oral comment; the
therapist conversed warmly and frequently and, moreover, collaborated
concretely in graphic-pictorial-plastic projects until the child learned to
do them alone.
Aesthetic reverberations of the child's activity may be found in very
expressive abstract gestural-type compositions with bright colours
(resembling modern action-paintings), in tempera paintings in which the
colour language indicates the persistence of conflicts that are going
toward solutions or in proportioned human figures appearing at the end of
the treatment, together with clear interest and competence in all kinds of
school activities.

References

Bonaiuto, P. & Biasi, V. (1997). Lack of symbolic representation in drawing
and play, and children's aggressive behavior. Security Journal, 9 (3),
189-192.
=46reud, S. (1930). Das Unbehagen in der Kultur. Wien: Internat.
Psychoanalytischer Verlag.
Katz, C. (1998). Revelation, consolation and repair in the creations of
children in play therapy.  Paper presented at the XV Congress of IAEA,
Rome.
Klein, M. (1930). The importance of symbol formation in the development of
the Ego. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 11.
Klein, M. (1950). The Psycho-Analysis of Children. London: Hogarth Press.
Klein, M. (1953). The psycho-analytic play technique: Its history and
significance. Paper presented at the Royal Medico-Psychological
Association, London. Publ. in: M. Klein, P. Heimann & R. Money Kyrle
(Eds.). New Directions in Psycho-Analysis. London: Tavistock, 1955  (pp.
29-52).
Levin, J. M. (1995). The prevention of violence and aggressive behavior in
children. Lecture presented at the Faculty of Psychology, 1st University of
Rome , "La Sapienza", Rome.
Levin, J. M. (1998). The use of artistic expression in the psychotherapy of
aggressive children. Paper presented at the XV Congress of IAEA, Rome.
Segal, H. (1973). Introduction to the Work of Melanie Klein. London:
Hogarth Press.
 

The Use of Artistic Expression in the Psychotherapy of Aggressive Children

James Levin

Department of Psychology, John Jay College, New York City University, New
York, USA
 

In this paper, I will explore several issues relating to the use of
artistic creations to further the psychotherapy of aggressive boys. I will
first consider the relationship of the ability to express oneself
symbolically to uncontrolled behavior. Since uncontrolled, aggressive
children do not play very adequately, I will next describe some ways the
therapist may help the child to metamorphose his actions into play
containing some symbolic elements. I will use clinical vignettes from the
psychotherapy of several aggressive boys to discuss such issues as: degrees
of distance of the symbolic content from the raw aggressive impulse (e.g.,
a picture of an explosion as opposed to a picture of a factory that makes
explosives); the difference between aggressive material in the content of
the child's art, and the destruction of the created play or art; the use of
artistic products both as an indicator of current aggressive feelings and
as an indicator of the moderation of aggressive impulses. There will be
some description of the developmental failures that underlie the failure of
children to moderate aggressive impulses, and examples of these boys' art
will be shown.
 
 
 

The Interpretation of Symbols in Psychopathologic Art

Asja Nina Kovacev

Department of General Psychology and Cultural Sociology, University of=
 Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia
 

The type of self-expression that can be recognized in the works of
psychopathologic art is radically different from consciously directed
creative activity. The process of traumatic contents' externalization
extends from the experience of unstructured and non-referential organic
meanings to the creation of complex representational systems, which reflect
the objective reality in a special system-specific way. By representing
reality, the abnormal distorts its image. So a profound analysis of the
symbols and other contentual elements that appear in psychopathologic art
provides useful information about the psychophysical condition of the
creative subject.
In the present study the main symbols that appear in psychopathologic art
were analysed. These symbols were placed into four categories:
1. symbols highly saturated with spatial symbolism (tree, mountain, house,
fence, path)
2. basic elements and planets (water, fire, sun, moon)
3. animals (tiger, snake, mystic animals)
4. parts of the human body (eye)
The traditional meanings of presented symbols were analysed and compared
with the characteristics of the patients' illness. In this way their
meanings in the concrete artistic context were determined.
 

Pupils as Subjects Involved in Drawing Practice

Dennis Atkinson

Department of Educational Studies, Goldsmiths University of London, London, =
UK
 

This paper explores the material nature of language in specific practices
which construct the pupil as a subject within the art curriculum. It
employs ideas from the work of Foucault and Lacan in order to establish the
materiality of the pedagogic gaze. In considering specific drawing
practices in school the paper problematizes the task facing teachers as
they assess or evaluate pupil's work. It shows that assessment practices
can underplay or even pathologise what may be, for pupils, powerful and
legitimate art pratices, when viewed as practices of signification. By
exposing specific hegemonies which inform particular art curriculum
practices, this paper explores how a more inclusive and legitimating
construction of pupils as subjects involved in drawing practice is
possible.
 
 
 

Symposium: Method, Study and Teaching of Literature

Research Institute for Comparative Literature, University of Alberta,
 Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
 
 

Literary Theory, Objectivity and the Question of Value

Satya P. Mohanty

Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA
 

Based on my recent book, Literary Theory and the Claims of History, Post
modernism, Objectivity, Politics (Corneal 1997), I will discuss the
question and problematics of method and the study of literature and
culture. I will build my case starting with questions about objectivity and
the inclusion of the Other both as social relevance and as theoretical
constructs in the study of literature and culture. I hope to demonstrate
the significance of an epistemologically based approach to objectivity,
rationality, ideology and politics resulting in a methodology to study
literature and culture which, in turn, results in a socially relevant
activity both within and outside the academe.
 
 
 

Reintegrating Sensibility: Situated Knowledge and Embodied Readers

Deanne Bogdan

Department of Theory and Policy Studies, Ontario Institute for Studies in
Education, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
 

Thirty-five years after the publication of Northrop Frye's The Educated
Imagination, it is evident that the conceptual framework underlying Frye's
theories of the teaching of literature has been a major theoretical and
practical touchstone for the method and study of literature. Under the
rubric of the educated imagination, a complex of assumptions about the
place and function of literature in the curriculum form a meta-problem: why
literature is taught (the justification problem),what literature is taught
(the canon/censorship problem), and how it is taught (the response
problem). Within Frye's reader-response theory, literary experience is
normatively conceived as "virtual." Additionally, Frye's critical system in
many ways posits a disembodied reader. Within such a framework the three
issues - justification, canon/censorship, response - comprising the
meta-problem could be addressed with regard to theory and method. In my
paper, I will discuss the above and will exemplify the problematics of
method by three additional categories: the reader's feeling, power and
location problems. My examples will be drawn from literature which
deliberately puts into relief the dialectic between "the meta-problem" and
"the feeling, power and location problems" so as to further a better
understanding of the possibilities and pitfalls of reintegrating
sensibility in the teaching of literature.
 
 
 
 
 
 

The Hazard of Hidden Interactions: Your Design Contains Them, Too!

Johan F. Hoorn

Faculty of Arts, General & Comparative Literature, Free University,
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
 

Research designs in the empirical study of literature and the psychology of
aesthetics often include unanalysed factors. The nature of these factors
may be linguistic (word frequency or lexical ambiguity) or technical
(presentation order, repeated measures). By not correctly analysing an
experiment, certain assumptions of the analysis of variance may be
violated. Higher-order interactions may go unnoticed, while interfering
with results. For my paper, examples of improperly analysed designs are
drawn from previously published work in empirical aesthetics and the
empirical study of literature, thereby focusing on how to treat hidden
factors post hoc.
 
 
 

Current Methods of Empirical Research: Reflections on the Study of the Act
of Reading

Aldo Nemesio

University of  Turin, Turin, Italy
 

My paper will examine current methods of empirical research on the reading
of literature in the following context: It is difficult to study what
happens when someone reads a text. If, in our research, we operate with
methods while the subjects are reading, we run the risk of rendering the
act of reading unnatural. If we operate our method after reading, we run
the risk of analysing mainly memory. Thus, it should be our objective to
design an empirical method for the understanding of reading similar to
echocardiography in clinical diagnosis, that is, a way of seeing the object
of our research in a reliable way without disrupting it.
 
 
 

The Nature of Intersubjectivity: What Does Empirical Mean in Systemic
Approaches to Literature?

Santos Iglesias Montserrat

University Carlos III of Madrid, Madrid, Spain
 

Systemic approaches to literature strongly defend the scientific status of
their methodology and theoretical framework. Their approach, thus, also
includes notions of the "empirical". In consequence, it is generally
assumed that it is necessary to verify inter-subjectively the set of
hypotheses they work with. Differences arise when we come to the nature of
inter-subjectivity. Some frameworks, like the Empirical Science of
Literature (S.J. Schmidt), tend to verify their hypotheses with immediate
experience, usually through test procedures and statistical analysis. This
paper will maintain a critical position towards this conception, arguing
that the empirical approach should mean, rather, the capacity to establish
norms, i.e., inter-subjective patterns. I will present some ideas about the
theoretical form and content of these norms and their meaningful
implementation in literary scholarship.
 
 
 

The Necessity of Method in the Study and Teaching of Literature

Steven Totosy de Zepetnek

Research Institute for Comparative Literature, University of Alberta,
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
 

In my paper, I will discuss the current situation of the study of
literature in the context of the Humanities as a whole from an
international and global point of view. In particular, I will explore the
impact of literary and culture theory via the global hold of English
(lingua franca) on the teaching of literature. I will take examples of
current literary theories, their importance within and outside of the study
and teaching of literature with particular attention to their aspects of
method. In my closing discussion I will argue for the necessity of a return
to rationality, objectivity, indeed, the "empirical" as a basic grounding
for an alternative method in the study and teaching of literature.
 
 
 
 

Paper Session: Psychology of Literary Creation and Fruition. I.

Faculty of Letters and Philosophy, University of Cassino, Cassino, Italy
 
 

Psychological Reading of "Rotschild's Violin" by A. Checov

Antonio Fusco and Rosella Tomassoni

Faculty of Letters and Philosophy, University of Cassino, Cassino, Italy
 

The critic Andreev wrote that in Checov non-verbal language prevails and
that his scenery beyond words is an expression of polysemic meanings. The
psychologist accepts this kind of criticism and adds that the very
presentation of the scene in which the story takes place anticipates the
essential elements of the story itself.
In "Rotschild's Violin" the main characters are an old little one room
house, a stove, a bed and, above all, the coffins. Jakov and Marfa are
"walking corpses" who, in total "discouragement", live a life reduced to
the vegetative meaning of the word. The dimension is that of a "psychic
death" to which a physical death will be added, with almost an exclusive
sense of liberation1.
Our analysis seeks to point out the essential moments of the psychic
dynamics of the main characters: a) the moment of total emotional
discouragement; b) the moment in which Marfa and Jakov individually regain
their emotional capacities on a conscious level.
The main elements of "variation" are: the memory of Marfa's dead little
girl, Marfa's death, the reappearance, also for Jakov on a conscious level,
of the little blond girl, and the violin and its sound, as the central
reference point of his renewed humanity;
Around these points: the coffins, Marfa's death and the mournful and
suggestive sound of the violin, a story is developed in which various
mental processes, which we will try to explain, "play a part": a) the
primitive emotional discouragement and the "alienation" of the subjects; b)
death which, impending on the scene, materializes the symbolism of the
coffins without any meaning of terror; c) Marfa's delirium as the only
moment of gratification in her life; d) her death as a liberation; e)
Jakov's humanization, contextual to the emerging on a conscious level of
his remorse with regard to Marfa and the memory of his daughter; f) the
sound of the violin which, in the meaning of epiphany2 of the whole story,
summarizes within the music the polysemic meaning of human life, woven with
pain, illusions, memories and a possible escape from reality by sheltering
the mind in a delirious but gratifying and abtraumatic dimension.
 

Notes

1 See the liberating death in "Sonata of Ghosts" by Strindberg and the
speech on "Death" in "Etat de Si=E8ge" by Camus.
2 Epiphany is intended in Joyce's meaning and, above all, in the
etymological meaning of the word and that is, thatwhich appears at the end,
as from the Greek "etymon".
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Statistical Analysis of Structural Patterns in the Poetry of Alexander Pushkin

Alexander Voloshinov

Department of Culturology, Saratov State Technical University, Saratov, Russ=
ia
 

All the 792 poems by Russian genius Alexander Pushkin were investigated on
the subject of the two major natural patterns presented in them - mirror
symmetry and golden section. Results of the research are as follows.
1. The pattern of golden section is found in every other of Pushkin's poems
(385 poems or 49% of the whole number).
2. The pattern of mirror symmetry occurs in every third of Pushkin's poems
(279 poems or 35%).
3. Either of the patterns is placed in two of every three poems (514 poems
or 65%) and both patterns - in every fifth (150 poems or 19%).
4. Both patterns bear not only the morphological, but also the aesthetic
meaning. It is proved by the fact that in the majority of Pushkin's
masterpieces there is at least one of the two patterns under investigation.
5. The two patterns are ontologically related. The dynamics of distribution
of both patterns depending on the years of creation (the peaks and falls of
the amplitudes of the quantity of poems containing the patterns) coincides
completely. Moreover, this dynamics bears a cyclic character, proving the
cyclic character of the cosmogonic and chaosogonic elements not only in the
history of arts, but also in the works of a single author.
6. The pattern of golden section is the indicator of creative peaks in the
poet's work. True, the years of Pushkin's creative upsurges - 1823, 1826,
1830 ("the Boldino autumn"), 1832, 1834 - are accompanied by the evident
percentage rise of the number of poems containing the golden section - 32%,
62%, 72%, 86%, and 91% correspondingly.
7. The pattern of golden section is the repository of climaxes and main
ideas of a poem. Of 385 poems with the golden section, the point of golden
section falls on the climax in 270 (70%) poems and on the line expressing
the main idea - in 304 (79%). So, it is hard to overestimate the aesthetic
function of the golden section in Pushkin's works. Still, the main function
of the golden section in his works is that of organizing the structure -
325 (84%) poems.

(Supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research, Grant 97-06-80209)
 
 
 

The Play of Concealing and Revealing and Its Psychological Implications in
Works by John Clarke

Estelle A. Mar=E9

Department of History of Art and Fine Arts, University of South Africa,
Pretoria, South Africa
 

It is my purpose to focus on one aspect of the work of a contemporary South
African artist, John Clarke, whose landscapes explore places altered by the
indigenous people. This aspect is the way in which his works represent
earth objects, such as stockades and stones, which Black people arrange for
various purposes in the southern African landscape. Clarke composes these
objects into imaginative arrangements which become loci for a play of
concealing and revealing. By always only referring to an implied human
presence in the landscape but never including any human figures, the artist
suggests an animistic presence in stones and stockades which seem to
arrange themselves in ways which calls to mind Heidegger's notion of
"earth" and "world" in his definition of the art work. Insight into the
ways in which Clarke explores his subject matter will be the basis for a
further analysis of the psychological implications of a White artist who
has empathy with the way in which the imprint of the activity of Blacks on
the land forms patterns which conflict with those technological structures
that Whites impose on the landscape.
 
 
 

Response to an Italian and an Icelandic Traditional Short Novel: Half a
Cross-Cultural Study

Simona Lazzarini and Sergio Morra

University of Padua, Padua, Italy
 

Two traditional short novels were presented to 55 Italian undergraduates.
One novel was Italian (2026 words), the other was an Italian translation of
an Icelandic novel (2059 words). Both novels concerned the dealings between
the manly and another, mysterious world (the dead, or the elves), as well
as themes of marital love. The subjects were tested for memory of each
story and asked to rate them for numerous aspects.
Memory for the stories was similar when scored for number of propositions
(i.e., for detail), but the Italian story was recalled better for the
number of crucial events (i.e., for structure). The Italian story was liked
better, rated as easier to comprehend, more similar to previously known
stories, having a more positive and coherent ending, and it elicited more
visual imagery and more positive emotions and =91dramatic=92 emotions. The
Icelandic story, instead, elicited more negative emotions. Rated ease of
comprehension of the Icelandic, but not of the Italian, story was
correlated with rated visual imagery.
Differences in liking between the two texts were accounted for by
differences in memory for events, ease of comprehension, elicited emotions,
visual imagery and rated positive ending. In turn, differences in elicited
positive emotions were accounted forby differences in visual imagery and
familiarity.
 
 
 

Pops and Flops: Some Properties of Famous English Poems

Richard S. Forsyth

Department of Mathematical Sciences, University of the West of England,
Bristol, UK
 

This paper describes a preliminary study of linguistic features that
differentiate popular from obscure poems in English. Following in the
footsteps of Simonton (1990), Martindale (1990) and others, frequency of
appearance in anthologies was used as an index of poetic popularity. Twenty
general anthologies published between 1966 and 1996 were selected and all
poems appearing in more than five of them were taken as a reference sample.
This gave 85 poems by 54 different authors. (The two most popular were
Matthew Arnold's Dover Beach  with 16 occurrences and Kubla Khan  by Samuel
T. Coleridge with 15.)
As a control group, 54 other poets were selected by finding a less eminent
poet of the same sex born within 10 years of each poet in the reference
sample. The same number of poems were chosen (as near as possible randomly)
from each obscure poet as from the matching popular poet. This gave 85
obscure poems, also by 54 different authors. As a check on this dichotomy,
the number of quotations from each of these 170 authors in the Little
Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (Ratcliffe, 1994) was tallied. For the
popular poets the median was 7 entries, for the obscure poets the median
was zero. This difference is highly significant (Mann-Whitney test,
p<0.00005).
Some aspects of the language of the two subsets were then examined.
Although the popular poems were on average longer than the obscure ones
(median length 155 and 127 words respectively), this difference was not
statistically significant (Mann-Whitney test, p=3D0.15). However, a number o=
f
significant differences were found, including: (1) the popular poems had
significantly fewer syllables per word in their first lines (Mann-Whitney
test, p=3D0.035); (2) popular poems were more likely to begin with an initia=
l
line composed entirely of monosyllables (Chi-squared, p<0.05); (3) the mean
number of letters per word in the popular poems was very significantly less
(4.13 versus 4.29) than the obscure poems (unpaired t-test, p=3D0.0004). Thu=
s
a clear tendency for famous poems to use shorter words than obscure poems
has been revealed. Simplicity appears to be a virtue.
=46urther results, including syntactic differences, will be discussed in the
paper and their implications considered.

References

Martindale, C. (1990). The Clockwork Muse. New York: Basic Books.
Ratcliffe, S. (1994, Ed.). The Little Oxford Dictionary of Quotations.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Simonton, D. K. (1990). Lexical choices and aesthetic success: A computer
content analysis of 154 Shakespeare sonnets. Computers & the Humanities,
24, 251-264.=1A
 
 
 

Paper Session: Psychology of Musical Composition and Listening. I.

Department of Psychology, 1st University of Rome, "La Sapienza", Rome,
Italy,  and ECONA, Interuniversity Centre for Research on Cognitive
Processing in Natural and Artificial Systems, Rome, Italy.
 
 

Relation Between Envelope-Pattern and Perception of "Rhythm"

Seiichiro Namba*, Kazuo Namba*, and Sonoko Kuwano**

  * Takarazuka University of Art and Design, Takarazuka City, Japan
** Osaka University, Osaka, Japan
 

Subjective duration of sound is strongly affected by envelope-pattern of
sound due to dynamic characteristics of hearing. Subjective duration of
decaying sounds is judged shorter than that of steady state sounds. It is
possible that the rhythmic impressions of the same score are different when
the envelope-patterns of sounds are different. Using synthesized sounds,
this hypothesis is investigated and it is found that the rhythm of decaying
sounds is judged faster than that of steady-state sounds even when the
performed melody is the same.
 
 
 

Music as People See It

Ewa Klimas-Kuchtowa

Institute of Psychology, Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland
 

The basic assumption for the research presented here was an idea refering to
 the holistic, active and creative character of the cognitive system.
The inspiration for this study were the important conclusions made by G.
Kleinen, concerned with an analysis of music related pictures (refering to
the theme: "Music communications").
In my research two separate studies were made. In the first, 73 children
(age 9-18, pupils of grammar school and of general high school) were asked
to draw "Music". In the second, subjects were 82 grammar school students
and 31 college students. All of them wrote essays on the theme "My eyes and
listening to music". The results of both studies will be discussed with
reference to Kleinen`s opinion and to some literature considerations
concerning musical synestesia.
 
 
 

Artificial Music

Howard Meltzer

College of Music, University of North Texas, Denton, Texas, USA
 

Two recent (November, 1997) articles in the New York Times documented David
Cope's computer program EMI, a program which composes "music in the style
of Bach." The articles raised issues of both compositional procedures and
aesthetic response. Artificial systems for composition are hardly new; a
method is presented in a treatise from the eleventh century. This paper
deals with the limitations and implications of such composition systems,
from that of Guido d'Arezzo to twentieth century serial techniques. To what
extent can musical composition be divorced from human intervention? How do
we regard the results in light of our emotional and evaluative judgments of
music in general? If we believe that music reflects the inner life of the
composer, can we justify our responses to the product of mechanical
processes?
 
 
 

Construction of a Tonal Phrase and Its Repercussions in Narrative Structure

Naomi Ziv

Department of Psychology, University of Paris-X, Nanterre, France
 

Previous studies suggest the perception of tonal music requires knowledge,
explicit or implicit, of the syntactic rules governing its grammar. This
knowledge allows the listener to follow the flow of sound and comprehend
the structural coherence of a given piece. However, it would be reductive
to maintain that the pleasure we derive from music listening is explicable
solely by the cognitive processes involved in the segmentation and
reintegration of musical chunks. The aim of the study presented was to
examine a possible parallel between tonal phrase structure and narrative
structure. Musical form is thus considered here as structured time. Two
questions were addressed: 1. Do listeners prefer a directional, closed
structure in a tonal phrase?. 2. How could tonal processes be related to
narrative structure?. Thirty non-musician subjects constructed a musical
piece from 7 given segments, using the puzzle paradigm. The 7 segments were
diatonic chords of a major scale. The subjects were then required to write
a short story which would suit the music. Analysis of music compositions,
in terms of tonal grammar, were compared to stories' structure, in terms of
exposition, tension and closure. Results tend to show a preference for a
directional, closed musical structure, and a parallel between the two types
of constructions (musical and narrative), which would suggest a
relationship between musical form perception and content attribution as
temporal processes.
 
 
 

Beethoven Becomes Faster? Test of Martindale's Preference-for-Prototypes
Model With the Help of Main Themes of Beethoven's Symphonies

Vera Mogyor=F3s*, J=FAlia Antos*, and Andras Farkas**

  * E=F6tv=F6s Lor=E1nd University, Budapest, Hungary
** Institute for Psychology of the Hungarian Academy of Science, Budapest,
Hungary
 

The main themes of Beethoven's nine symphonies were presented in one
session to two untrained groups of Hungarian secondary school pupils
differing on the level of knowledge of classical music. The order of the 37
(1.5-2 sec long) passages were randomized in such a way that earlier and
later symphonies, and faster and slower movements, were included in equal
proportion in the first, second and third part of the series of stimuli.
Listening to the passages, experimental subjects had to rate the stimuli
along the following scales: liking, familiar, fast, typical, exciting.
During the very long experiment, we expected a shift of the mean values of
the scales, as the experiment proceeded from beginning to end. Martindale's
preference-for-prototype model suggests that liking basically is determined
by the prototypicality of stimuli, which also has to change in case of
untrained raters as a result of listening to a large number of musical
passages. If Martindale is right, the stimuli rated as more typical should
also be liked more, and this relationship should be even closer, due to the
expected strengthening of the prototype by the end of the experiment. The
results did not verify hypotheses of Martindale's model. Even in the case
of the group more trained in classical music, factor analysis showed a
strong connection between familiarity and liking, while typicality with
other scales constituted a distinct factor. The shift of the scale values
during the experiment was as follows: in case of both groups, the passages
seemed more typical as the experiment proceeded. At the same time, in the
case of the less trained group, although their familiarity ratings did not
change, the passages were liked less and less, and they seemed less
exciting and slower. In the case of the  more trained group, the passages
became more familiar, exciting and fast, while their liking gradually
increased.
 
 
 

Design of a Virtual Stage for Music Composition

Kazuo Namba

Takarazuka University of Art and Design, Takarazuka City, Japan
 

To compose music for drama, it is helpful to visualize the stage.
A virtual stage is visualized on the CRT of a computer and, looking at a
monitor, a composer writes pieces of music with a synthesizer. A virtual
stage is also projected on a large screen and can be used as a background
of the actual stage. This process and examples will be introduced.
 
 
 

Recognition Memory for Previously Novel Musical Themes in Children

Marta Olivetti Belardinelli*=B0, Fabio Cifariello Ciardi**, and Clelia
Rossi-Arnaud*

   * Department of Psychology, 1st University of Rome, "La Sapienza", Rome,
Italy.
ECONA, Interuniversity Centre for Research on Cognitive Processing in
Natural and Artificial Systems, Rome, Italy.
** Conservatorio di Musica di Campobasso, Campobasso, Italy.
 

Previous studies have analyzed recognition memory for famous and obscure
musical themes in adults (e.g. Java, Kaminska & Gardiner, 1995; Gardiner,
Kaminska, Dixon & Java, 1996).
In the present experiment, recognition memory for previously novel melodies
was tested in children aged 7 to 9. Subjects listened to a set of novel
monophonic themes.
In later recognition tests these melodies were represented along with a set
of similar themes which had not been presented in the study list. Subjects
had to identify the themes they had heard earlier in the experiment.
Musical stimuli were devised by a composer and were of 4 types organized
into 2 categories, according to their salience:
A. Salient: 1) tonal; 2) non-tonal;  and B. non-salient: 3) tonal; 4) non-to=
nal.
Salient stimuli presented pattern redundancy along one or more dimensions
as a frequent occurrence of small sets of rhythm and/or melodic patterns.
Tonal stimuli were constructed on major or minor mode scales and contained
implicit references to the main rules of tonal harmony. Non-tonal stimuli
were based on non tonal scales and did not refer to any underlying tonal
structure.
Results showed that children were more likely to recognize salient tonal
themes than themes belonging to the other categories. Further, it was shown
that fewer false recognition responses were given for salient non-tonal
themes than for themes belonging to all other categories.
Results are interpreted in terms of:
a) major perceptual relevance of salience than of tonality in melodic
processing;
b) relative ease of encoding different types of musical stimuli;
c) previous experience with each musical genre.
 
 
 

Paper Session: Psychology of Musical Composition and Listening. II.

Department of Psychology, 1st University of Rome, "La Sapienza", Rome, Italy
 
 

Performance as Embodied Listening

Deanne  Bogdan

Department of Theory and Policy Studies, Ontario Institute for Studies in
Education, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
 

This presentation is an autobiographical inquiry into how the critical
issue of intersubjectivity might be entered through the performance of
Western art music. It explores my own personal musical performance practice
to discover the questions it poses and possibilities it creates for
theorizing the relationship between self and other for pedagogical
practice. Specifically, I analyze the learning processes involved in
bringing to actuality the congruence between myself as a piano soloist and
an unchanging orchestral background within the context of the recording
technology of "Music Minus One" (EMI). In attempting to consummate (in
Bakhtin's terms) a performance of the second movement of the Beethoven
Piano Concerto in B Flat major, No. 2, against the orchestral accompaniment
provided by the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra (EMI), I undergo a dialogical
process of listening to the other on the other's own terms and thus of
confronting the other within myself. During the course of the presentation,
I revisit specific musical cadences, in which I reflect on some of the
contradictions between desire, identity and non=1Eidentity through Edward
Said' s notion of a "contrapuntal reading" and Lawrence Kramer's
"pragmatics of performative listening." The presentation includes musical
illustrations in the form of reproduced excerpts from the score and
recorded passages.
 
 
 

In-Store Music and Consumer Behaviour

Adrian C. North, David J. Hargreaves , and Jennifer McKendrick

Department of Psychology, University of Leicester, Leicester, UK
 

This paper describes two recent field studies concerning the effects of
musical typicality on consumer behaviour. The first study investigated the
extent to which stereotypically French and German music could influence
supermarket customers' selection of French and German wines. Music with
strong national associations should activate related knowledge and cause
customers to buy wine from the country concerned. Over a two week period,
=46rench and German music was played on alternate days from an in-store
display of French and German wines. French music led to French wines
outselling German ones, whereas German music led to the opposite effect on
sales. The second study investigated the effect of three musical styles and
silence on the perceived characteristics of a student cafeteria and on
customers' purchase intentions therein. Subjects' responses to a
questionnaire indicated that different musical styles had different effects
on the perceived characteristics of the cafeteria, and that classical music
was associated with subjects being prepared to pay the most for food items
on sale therein. There was also some indication that classical and pop
music might have increased actual sales in the cafeteria. These results
have commercial implications which apply the concept of prototypicality to
in-store music.
 

Emotional Responses to Familiar and Unfamiliar Musical Excerpts. Sharing
the Same Structural and Harmonic Elements

Lenore E. DeFonso* and Nancy E. Kelley**

  * Indiana-Purdue University, Fort Wayne, Indiana, USA
** Manchester College, Manchester, UK
 

This study attempts to determine some of the factors that influence
emotional responses to music. It is proposed by some theorists that these
emotional responses are innate and determined by the characteristics
inherent in the music itself. This position would suggest, for example,
that we experience a piece of music played in a minor key as sad because of
some inborn response to the minor mode. Other theorists propose that these
emotional responses are learned through a process of association or
conditioning. Thus, we might feel sad when listening to music played in a
minor key because we have learned to associate the minor mode with sadness.
Another possibility is that our emotional responses to music are learned
through association with particular events, and are not dependent on the
characteristics of the music itself. The present study compares emotional
responses to very familiar music that has a specific referent with pieces
that are structurally and harmonically identical, but are unfamiliar and
have no referent.
Twelve musical excerpts were selected that had very high familiarity and
also a strong specific referent (wedding march, graduation march, lullaby,
etc.). Each of these was paired with an excerpt that had identical
stylistic and harmonic characteristics, but was not familiar and had no
specific referent. (Familiarity and existence of a referent were tested in
a pilot study.) The resulting 24 excerpts, approximately one minute in
length, were played in a random order, so that subjects were unaware of any
pairing of excerpts. For each excerpt, subjects were asked to indicate the
following: (1) the type of emotion it evoked in them, as well as the
strength of the emotion; (2) how much they liked or disliked it; (3) how
familiar it was; (4) the name and composer, if known; (5) any associations
they had to the music.
Data analysis is in progress. Members of the pairs of excerpts will be
compared on the above measures, and the results interpreted to determine
the basis of the emotional responses to them.
 
 
 

Developmental Aspects of Musical Interpretation

Carlos X. Rodriguez

Division of Curriculum and Instruction, College of Education, University of
Iowa, Iowa City, USA
 

The essence of musical thinking and behavior is the ability to make
interpretations, which consists of connecting inherent qualities of sound
to qualities of things in general. At different age levels, and
particularly with the advent of formal instruction in music, humans make
dramatic changes in the mental processes used to interpret music.
Accompanying these new processes are attendant changes in aesthetic focus
that is, what one finds most relevant to the understanding of the finished
musical work. The purpose of this study was 1) to determine whether
children at various age levels were able to distinguish their
interpretation of a musical composition from the interpretations of others,
and 2) to determine the cognitive (structural) and aesthetic (expressive)
factors that contributed to their decision. Forty subjects (ten each of
five, seven, nine, and eleven year-olds) performed a pre-composed song
using MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface). Subjects were then asked
to identify which of three interpretations of the same song was their own.
=46inally, subjects were interviewed and asked several open-ended questions
about their performing and identifying experiences. Data are analyzed for
possible developmental tendencies and support for findings in other
developmental studies of music cognition and aesthetic sensitivity.
=46inally, implications for a more creative approach to music teaching and
learning are explored.
 
 
 

The Shift of Musical Idiom in Estonia During the 19th Century: Comparison
of Two Traditions

Jaan Ross

Faculty of Philosophy, University of Tartu, Tartu, Estonia
 

The fraternity of Moravians (die Herrnhuter) extended their religious
activities to the Baltic countries during the first half of the18th
century. The impact of this movement to Estonian culture has been very
significant. A large part of the local population was first introduced to
the Western tonal music idiom through services of the Moravian brothers.
The Baltic-Finnic traditional modal music tradition, the so-called Kalevala
songs, was replaced step-by-step by the European tonal idiom during the
19th century on most of the contemporary Estonian territory.
The traditional Kalevala songs are structurally and syntactically different
from the tonal music idiom. They are one-voiced and their structure is
based on trochaeic verse lines, consisting of four feet each. The contrast
between ictus and off-ictus positions is the most powerful factor in
Kalevala songs, which is maintained both in the text and in the melody of
the songs. The Kalevala repertoire is based on two largely independent
corpora of texts and melodies. Elements from one corpus may freely be
combined with the elements from another corpus.
 
 
 

Musical Thought and its Evolution as a Problem of Cultural Mentality

Elena Semenova

State Conservatory of Astrakhan, Astrakhan, Russia
 

The theme proposed for the discussion is a hypothesis on the historical
evolution of the musical way of thinking, presented like a dynamic model,
considering the development of musical culture in correlation with the
questions of cultural mentality and the psyche. This research is
coordinated with the idea that the culture of each great historical epoch
produces its own "picture of the world" and forms a mental structure
influencing a man's perception and activity. This mental structure is
total: it is observed in all thought levels, situated along the
"concrete-abstract" axis, in the offered scheme and it is discovered in all
kinds of artistic creation (in music, in architecture, in painting, in
literature) which are considered here concerning this "hierarchical scale".
In this scheme, music is considered to be on the highest level of
abstracts, corresponding to the ideas of Space and Time (according to the
conception of the Russian philosopher, A. Losev). The most general mental
structural principles, formulated in the notions of this level, are also
discovered in the most profound principles of musical organization (in the
sphere of musical modus, rhythm and formation).  In the offered dynamic
model of the evolution of the musical way of thinking the different mental
layers become actuality consecutively. The logic of this evolution
stimulates reflections on great and small cultural cycles, and stimulates a
hypothesis on the future of culture.
 
 
 

The Role of Aesthetics in Enjoying Sad Music

Valerie N. Stratton* and Annette Zalanowski**

  * Department of Psychology, Altoona College, The Pennsylvania State
University, Altoona, Pennsylvania, USA
** Department of Music, Altoona College, The Pennsylvania State University,
Altoona, Pennsylvania, USA
 

Some music researchers and theorists have puzzled over why people enjoy
music that produces negative emotions. Schubert (1996) has proposed that an
aesthetic context (e.g., music) inhibits the displeasure center, allowing
sad music to activate sadness without displeasure. Our study attempted to
test this theory by comparing reactions to sad and happy music (aesthetic)
and sad and happy verbal reports (non-aesthetic). Subjects' moods were
tested with the Multiple Affect Adjective Check List (MAACL-R)(Zuckerman
and Lubin, 1985) before and after listening to a sad or happy song or a sad
or happy essay. A questionnaire was given to rate enjoyment and other
reactions. The sad song was indeed enjoyed more than the sad essay despite
having increased depression to the same extent. Interestingly, the sad
essay greatly increased hostility which the song did not. Both the song and
essay dealt with Princess Diana's death, but matching the content of a song
and an essay is difficult. Thus, while the findings of this study do not
contradict Schubert's theory, there are many questions remaining before
aesthetic context can be confidently identified as the critical variable.
Why was the sad song in this study enjoyed more than the happy song? Why do
subjects report that they enjoy sad music more when it matches an existing
mood? Why do people enjoy non-aesthetic stimuli, such as roller coasters,
which evoke negative emotions? And, crucially, is there a non-circular way
to define aesthetic?

References

Schubert, E. (1996). Enjoyment of negative emotions in music: An
associative network explanation. Psychology of Music, 24, 18-28.
Zuckerman, M. & Lubin, B. (1985). Manual for the Multiple Affect Adjective
Check List, Revised. San Diego: Education and Industrial Testing Service.
 
 
 
 
 

Salience Points in Schoenberg's op. n=B0 19 Detected by Deaf and Hearing
Subjects: A Comparison

Marta Olivetti Belardinelli *and Italia Calabrese

* Department of Psychology, 1st University of Rome, "La Sapienza", Rome, Italy.
**ECONA, Interuniversity Centre for Research on Cognitive Processing in
Natural and Artificial Systems, Rome, Italy.
 

Perceptual processing of atonal music is a core research topic in today's
psychology of music. The interest for atonal music derives from the
disruption it operates of all the laws that guarantee tonal music to be
foreseen.
Sch=F6nberg's op. n=B0 19 in the "Kleine Klavierstucke" understrikes the cha=
nge
from tonal to atonal music with a peculiar use of sounds, timbres and
rhythms. Previous studies detected the differences in strategies of
processing and capacities of coding tonal and atonal melodies by means of
Ss responses to musical listening (Mikumo, 1992).
We adopted the same technique with two different groups of children aged
9-13: The first group was formed by deaf children who received music
education during the last 5 years and the second one by normally hearing
children.
We looked for the detection of salience points by the Ss in Sch=F6nberg's op=
.
n=B0 19 and for any differences in the performances of the 2 groups.
Performances by deaf and hearing children show a good degree of similarity
and we consider this result as proof of the effectiveness of giving music
education to deaf children.

References

Mikumo, M. (1992). Enconding strategies for tonal and atonal melodies.
Music Perception, 10 (1), 73-81.
Sch=F6nberg, A. (1991). Manuale di armonia. Milan: Mondadori.
 
 
 

A Psychophysiological Model of Aesthetic Perception in Music

Vezio Ruggieri

Department of Psychology, 1st University of Rome, "La Sapienza", Rome, Italy
 

The author analyzes the psychophysiological components of the process of
response elicited by aesthetic stimuli. The first step is represented by
specific perceptual activity (e.g. acoustic) that is necessary for the
identification of the pattern of stimulation. The second step is
constituted by a process of micro-reproduction and imitation of the
stimulus. For example, a subject perceiving an image representing a girl
making grimaces, reproduces, in a silent and unapparent way, the same
grimance: this hypothesis was formulated on the basis of tonic activity of
the muscles specifically involved in the pattern, that are not preset in
the other mimic muscles. The micro-imitative reproduction refers not only
to "anthropomorphic stimuli", but to a formal quality present in each
perceptual stimulus. For example, in music the perception of the dynamic
(perception of variations of acoustic intensity) is related not only to an
acoustic discrimination of intensity, but also to a perception of
variations of tension. We hypothesize that the perception of variation of
tension (in the wide aesthetic sense) is obtained through a transduction of
some characteristic of the stimulus on muscular activity. This transduction
of the external signal in muscular activity produces a new form of internal
signal that, through a feed-back mechanism, generates the subjective
feeling of tension.
In other words, in the perception of each aesthetic pattern, two systems
are simultaneously involved:
1. The specific modal sensorial composed of the receptor (e.g. acoustic),
the afferent neurological pathways and the analyzer of the cerebral cortex,
2. The muscular system, whose activity produces internal signals that
represent the basis for the subjective feeling.
This concept is important in music, where tension, lightness etc.,
represent central elements of the aesthetic experience.
 
 
 

Symposium: Computational Content Analysis: If, When, Why, What

Department of Linguistics, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK
 
 

Overview. Computational Content Analysis: If, When, Why, What

Max Louwerse

Department of Linguistics, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK
 

Harald Klein will present an overview of content analysis software and will
discuss particular problems with the available software. Robert Hogenraad
will present a comparable overview, but will look at what has been achieved
and what remains to be done. So far, software has focused on wordlevel;
Hogenraad's question is what the 'black holes' are and what can be done on
the sentence level and beyond. Willard McCarty will also discuss the
limitations of the current software by addressing the question of how to
understand the failures of computational tools to deal with the subtleties
of human language. This will be done in the context of Ovid's
Metamorphosis. Max Louwerse will propose a paradigm beyond the word and
sentence level by focussing on a propositional level in computational text
analysis. By using a connectionist model the computer seems to be able to
grasp the coherence of a text. Finally, two speakers will discuss two
well-known computer programs. Alan Cartwright will give a demonstration of
how Code-A-Text can be used on the level of 'abstraction' and 'emotion' in
psychotherapy interviews. It will be shown how the program generates data
by identifying patterns in text. Colin Martindale will give us further
insights in the history, present and future of the program Alexis, by
describing how it can be used in all kinds of content analysis and lexical
statistics.
 
 
 

Using Code-A-Text to Develop Methodological Studies of Dialogues

Alan Cartwright

Kent Institute of Medicine and Health Sciences, University of Kent,
Canterbury, UK
 

Code-A-Text is a multimedia application that has been designed to
facilitate the detailed study of dialogues. It is optimised to work with
audio and text but also supports video and pictures and text which is not
formatted as a dialogue. In Code-A-Text you can record, transcribe, code
and analyse dialogues and then output data to other packages for further
study.
In Code-A-Text the user divides the text down into segments (e.g. speech
units or thought units) and applies codes to these. There are six forms of
codes, these are categorical and numerical scales, words and word groups,
interpretations and textual annotations. One value of being able to code
the same text using different coding methods is that you can move between
different methodologies
This presentation will demonstrate how the package has been used in a study
of the levels of "abstraction" and "emotion" in four psychotherapy
interviews. This was a student project in which we wanted to try and
identify patterns within these interviews which might be clinically
significant. The theory being that different patterns of these phenomena
and rapid changes from one state to another might be clinically
significant.
Stage 1 was the development of scales to measure these concepts. This was
done by using the interpretations section of the package to develop ideas
about how these concepts might be applied to the text. In Code-A-Text sound
and text are linked together and you can also code directly from sound
without transcription. These comments were then indexed by the program and
the index was used to identify, compare and contrast sections of text thus
enabling the building of the categorical scales.
Stage 2 was the coding of the scales; each text was coded by different
teams of raters. Inter rater agreement was then checked using the program
and consensus ratings made.
Stage 3 involved merging the four texts together to create a single large
text (28,000 words) which was the focus of further analysis. The
relationship between the codes for the concepts and the words in the
segments was examined identifying the words in the text which were most
frequently used in segments that had been coded. These words are grouped
together to form two word groups. One for words predicting abstraction and
another for words predicting emotion.
Stage 4 involved reconstructing the texts so that they were in standard
word blocks (150 words) and creating a numerical scale of the frequency of
occurrence of abstraction and emotion words in the word blocks. This data
was then exported to SPSS where it could be plotted graphically.
Stage 5 analysis revealed changing patterns of abstraction and emotion as
the therapy progressed and points where there was a rapid change of state.
Stage 6 involved methods derived from categorisation analysis and=
 conversation analysis in order to examine the clinical significance of=
 these changes of state.
The project has been developed to explore the computer based methodologies.
In this presentation the focus will be on the ways the computer program has
been used to generate the data rather than on the specific findings of the
project.
 
 
 

Content Analysis: An Agenda of Things to Do

Robert Hogenraad

Department of Psychology, Catholic University of Leuven, Leuven, Belgium
 

Things have changed in matters of content analysis. We will see in what
ways. I review here both what has been achieved so far and what, in my
view, remains to be done. There will be no big science here, for my purpose
is to inventory achievements, problems and "black holes", and consider
solutions.
What has been done so far: Software systems have multiplied (INTEXT,
ALEXIS, TEXTPACK, NUDIST, PROTAN, Iker's WORDS, Carley's MAP analysis,
Peladeau's WordStat, etc.), some of them rendered user-friendly with menus
running under Windows 95 for example. Simultaneously, lexicographic tools
were developed to go with these new software systems, that is,
content-analytic dictionaries. Martindale's Regressive Imagery Dictionary,
the Harvard Psycho-Sociological Dictionary, the Minnesota Content Analysis
Dictionary, dictionaries of affect, etc. All these systems can be ascribed
to one of two strategies, the dictionary or concept-driven strategy, and
the contextual or empirical or word-word correlational and data-driven
strategy. Finally, the field is now kitted out with a set of canonical
rules for the statistical analysis of content-analytic data. Teams, such as
McKenzie, Martindale and I, have been, and still are, developing rationales
and procedures for improving the processing of content-analytic data in
order to set the field above its still blight image of a discount social
science. I illustrate this first point using my own PROTAN system of
computer- supported content analysis applied to political speeches of EU
Presidents, Delors (1985-1994) and Santer (1995- ).
What cannot be done in the immediate future: The above-mentioned software
systems process text at the word level. And stay there. Computational
linguistics is presently experimenting with analyzing text at the
sentence-level, or higher up. However, for the time being and for some time
ahead, processing text at the word-level will be the only one capable of
handling massive data bases: In this sense, and in this sense only,
computational linguistics is developing an intelligence in excess of local
needs. Disambiguation rules exist. Whether they are capable of catching the
nuances of each word in its context is a question that I will not consider
here. This and other related questions have just been reviewed by Wilks in
a recent issue of Computer and the Humanities. Note, however, that a tool
such as the Regressive Imagery Dictionary turns this liability into an
advantage. For example, the several senses of the word bridge (general
structure providing passage over a gap, as between the two sides of a
river, or the two sides of the nasal bone, or the two sides of natural
teeth) are all subsumed under the category of "passage" in the dictionary,
while disambiguation rules would probably differentiate between these three
senses.
What can be done with little cost: Several points to be mentioned here
concern the organizational side of science. The software systems mentioned
above can be used in several languages. Dictionaries cannot. Until now, too
many lexicographic tools can be used only with Western languages,
especially American-English. There is a critical need to develop
adaptations of existing content-analytic dictionaries into Russian,
Ukrainian, Bulgarian, Polish, etc., not to mention the Asian and other
languages. A Russian RID is, however, currently in development by
Martindale's team. If you are looking for opinions, here is one: The
development of multilingual content-analytic thesauruses or dictionaries
should be the top priority in content analysis practice. It could be a
challenge for this Association. The field has no scientific journal
specifically devoted to it. Few scientific associations are specifically
focused on content analysis. (At least there is now a web site to this
effect). The teaching of content analysis should be encouraged in
Universities. Talking about content analysis is not enough. Learning to do
it passes through workshops and through writing books and users' manuals
that describe how to do it. The portability of software systems should also
be considered. Some systems are for Mac's only, or PC's only. Other
powerful platforms are often ignored (UNIX, LINUX, for example). Finally,
diversifying the applications of content analysis is another avenue toward
scientific recognition, such as its uses for data-mining in business
applications.
 
 
 

Text Analysis with Computers: Overview, Implications, Problems and Software

Harald Klein

Department of Sociology, Friedrich Schiller University, Jena, Germany
 

The paper gives an overview on text analysis software. The first part
contains the definition of terms and the different meanings of the same
terms used by different approaches. In particular, the implications of the
qualitative and quantitative approach in the research process are
discussed. Also, the available text analysis software is classified into
different approaches and goals. Another point is how to prepare data for
the analyses. The problems of typing, scanning and dictating are discussed
and compared.
The second part deals with external variables, text segmentation, technical
obstacles like unwanted characters (printing characters), file sizes, as
well as linguistic ones (like lemmatization, homonyms, ambiguity, negation)
and their control. Solutions and circumventions are described for ambiguity
and negation in particular, also the pros and cons of interactive coding
and rapport files.
The next part deals with the software currently available, with a focus on
software for computer aided content analysis. Each of the software packages
is briefly described with its advantages and disadvantages. Currently, the
following programs will be included: CatPac, Diction 4.0, Dimap/MCCA,
General Inquirer, Intext 4.1, Sato, Textpack 7, TextSmart 1.0, Protan,
Swift 2.81, VbPro and WordStat 1.0.
The criteria for comparison are text unit length, number and length of
external variables, analyses like word lists, KWICs/KWOCs, content
analysis, type of search patterns from single words to co-occurrences of
strings (or part(s) of those), and features that support content analysis.
Also QDA-software will be described, although it is not possible to discuss
these programs in detail because of their large number, but, of course,
evaluation criteria like coding modes, memos, annotations, and graphic
displays are included.
=46inally, useful information sources on the WWW, ftp-servers and URLs of
interesting sites for text analysis are provided.
 
 
 

Models of Mind: Where Content Analysis and Text Comprehension Meet

Max Louwerse

Department of Linguistics, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK
 

In this paper I will take a closer look at the link between computer and
mind, that is, between (computational) content analysis and (psychological)
text comprehension. First, a brief history will be given of quantitative
and qualitative software. The focus of the paper will be on a connectionist
model that uses coherence relations in order to calculate the connection
strengths between text units to form a hierarchical text structure.
Most of the computer software that can be used for content analysis is
based on word frequency (e.g. PROTAN, ALEXIS, TACT, HUM). These programs
offer many answers on important questions in text analysis (including many
literary aspects, as literary periods, genre, etc.) and have been proven
very useful. However, if we want to try to build a computer model on text
comprehension, these quantitative models do not seem to suffice. A model is
then needed that also uses the structural information of the text, software
that takes sequential information into account. In other words, it should
also deal with qualitative information. Several software packages can be
used for this kind of qualitative analysis (e.g. DiscAn, NotaBene,
Epitest). In those computational models that analyze (quantitatively and
qualitatively) the structure of the text, another distinction can be made:
1) models that directly link model to text (which I will call
"computational text decoders");
2) computer models built on the basis of comprehension processes in our
mind (which I will call "computational text interpreters").
The focus in this paper will be on a computational text interpreter. It
will be shown that connectionist models offer many advantages over other
computational models representing discourse processes. The model proposed
here translates the clauses of a text into propositions, i.e., higher
conceptual units. Propositions consist of eventualities (event, process,
state) and thematic roles (agent, object, instrument, source, goal, time
and place) and can be seen as psychological concepts that are used in
processing discourse. It is proposed that the connections between these
units determine the structure of the text. These connections are defined in
terms of a set of coherence relations. By assigning values to the different
relations, connection strengths structure the units of the text.
Integrating these units in a connectionist architecture enables us to form
a hierarchical structure of the text. The connection strengths can be
learnt on the basis of the results of summarization and recall experiments.
The general architecture of the model will be discussed and its advantages
will be shown. Furthermore, the coherence relations will be explained in
the light of psycholinguistic studies on discourse processing. The effect
of these coherence relations on the structure of the text will then be
presented by exploring the results of the computer model.
 
 
 

Alexis: A General Purpose Text Analysis Program

Jonna Kwiatkowski*, Colin Martindale* and Dean McKenzie**

  * Department of Psychology, University of Maine, Orono, Maine, USA
** Monash University, Melbourne, Australia
 

Alexis is a Windows 95 program that performs content analysis and computes
standard lexical statistics. It is patterned after Martindale's mainframe
programs, COUNT and LEXSTAT, and Hogenraad's PROTAN. As well as applying
user-supplied dictionaries, Alexis includes a number of built in
dictionaries: English, French, German, Latin, Portuguese and Russian
versions of Martindale's Regressive Imagery Dictionary; Stone's Harvard III
Dictionary; four dictionaries designed to measure concreteness of
vocabulary; a dictionary that applies Heise's norms for semantic
differential dimensions; and Martindale and Martindale's Element and
Temperament Dictionary. Several types of output can be produced: the main
file showing the results of the content analysis, a file in a format that
can be input to any standard statistics program such as SAS, Systat, or
SPSS, and a text file showing which words have been applied to which
categories.
Alexis can also compute a large number of lexical statistics such as mean
word length, mean word frequency, mean sentence length, type-token ratio,
hapax legomena percentage, relative information, and Yule's K. Unless one
wants to compute an arcane lexical statistic, the program probably computes
it automatically.
The program accepts extended ascii text and dictionaries in either Roman or
Cyrillic alphabets. For the included dictionaries, the program
pre-processes texts containing diacritical marks so that dictionary lookups
are done correctly. For user-supplied dictionaries, diacritical marks can
be included in the dictionary. The program is available to IAEA members for
a modest shipping and handling fee. Contact the first author for details.
 
 
 
 

Neurosurgery With a Spade

Willard McCarty

King's College, London, UK
 

This paper raises the question with which I think all genuinely useful work
in humanities computing must begin: how to understand the failure of our
computational tools to deal with the subtleties of imaginative language. Is
the promise of our craft forever to be out of reach, in the future or in
someone's laboratory, not quite yet available? Is not the appeal to
progress in effect an evasion of responsibility to face the realities of
failure, now, with the software and hardware we have? Technological
progress will surely give us better tools, but experience suggests that the
promised land will always remain promised. The use of deliberately crude
(or "tinkertoy") modeling, especially in the physical sciences, points the
way to a pragmatic answer, emphasising the great importance of failure, and
so to the gulf between the crudely mechanical precision of computing and
the imaginative precision of human language. This in turn implies that the
via negativa of failure should lead to better questions about how we know
what we know. Is this, in fact, the case? Or is loss-in-translation, from
poetry to character strings, itself a misleading model for what scholars do
when they analyse text with a computer?
I will raise these questions in the context of Ovid's Metamorphoses and
offer some tentative examples of how the failures of my computational
modeling lead to a better understanding of the poetry.
 
 

Demonstration Session on Computational Content Analysis

Department of Linguistics, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK
 
 

Code-A-Text

Alan Cartwright

Kent Institute of Medicine and Health Sciences, University of Kent,
Canterbury, UK
 
 

Protan

Robert Hogenraad

Department of Psychology, Catholic University of Leuven, Leuven, Belgium
 
 

INTEXT

Harald Klein

Department of Sociology, Friedrich Schiller University, Jena, Germany
 
 

Cocoon

Max Louwerse

Department of Linguistics, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK
 
 

Alexis

Jonna Kwiatkowski

Department of Psychology, University of Maine, Orono, Maine, USA
 
 

Analytical Onomasticon to the Metamorphoses of Ovid

Willard McCarty

King's College, London, UK
 
 
 
 
 

Abstracts for Tuesday - Thursday UNDER CONSTRUCTION