講演会・勉強会

Psychology of music has traditionally focussed on the perception and cognition of music by individuals emphasising the relationship between subject and object - the listening or performing individual and how they perceive or produce music. Advances in embodied, ecological and enactive cognition require us to rethink this focus and instead consider music cognition as distributed and relational - relational with respect to other people as well as the environment. In this presentation, I will briefly present the framework of distributed cognition, followed by four studies that investigate relationality and distribution in music cognition. The first looks at how ‘others’ are included in an individual’s cognition of music when practising or performing. This is compared to how others are experienced and perceived when physically present. The second investigates the experience of synchrony and asynchrony in a tapping task from the perspective of participants who hypothesise on the psychology of the other participant. The third looks at possible differences in experiences of emotions and preferences of music depending on self-construal as independent of or interdependent with others. Finally, the implications of a relational perspective on music cognition is explored for developments of musical activities for people with dementia changing the focus from countering cognitive challenges due to dementia of individuals to a ‘we’ perspective where people are supported to jointly enjoy and engage in a task, providing technologically supported agency to the duo or group. This presentation showcases recent and ongoing research at the Music Mind Machine group with a common interest in music cognition as joint behaviour and distributed cognition.

Renee Timmers is Professor of Psychology of Music at the University of Sheffield, UK. Renee studied Musicology (MA) at the University of Amsterdam and Psychology (PhD) at the Radboud University Nijmegen, before doing postdocs in Europe and the US at Music, Psychology, and Computer Science departments. Since taking on the position in Sheffield in 2009, she has founded the Music, Mind, Machine research centre in Sheffield, and directed the onsite and distance learning MAs in Psychology of Music. Her research investigates communication, expression and emotion in music as experienced by performers and listeners. Originally, her research was primarily quantitative, experimental and lab-based. Recently, greater emphasis has been given to ecological validity, embodiment and health and wellbeing applications, using qualitative methods as well. As part of her professional work, she has been co-editor of Empirical Music Review, associate editor of Psychomusicology: Music, Mind and Brain, served on various editorial boards, and as President of the European Society of Cognitive Sciences of Music. She has published several books as editor, most recently Together in Music: Coordination, Expression, Participation (OUP), and has close to 90 journal article, book chapter or book publications.