This text comprises of reviews of work relating to music and mind. It presents a range of approaches from the psychological through the computational, to the musicological. The reviews were selected from papers submitted at the Third International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition Liege 1994 to illustrate the wide range of perspectives now being adopted in studying how humans make and respond to music. The book is divided ino five sections. The first part illustrates the role of analysis and ethnomusicology in understanding cultural determinants of musical behaviour. The second part charts what is known about aquisition of musical competence, from pre-birth through to the expert performer. The evidence accumulated about specific areas of the brain which control musical thinking and behaviour is examined in Part Three. The fourth part examines how neurological, behavioural and artificial intelligence approaches are converging to shed light on processes in auditory perception. Finally, Part Five highlights the important developments in how we conceptualize the way in which musical structures are represented in the mind.

This book comprises a series of "state-of-the-art" reviews on work relating music and mind. It offers a uniquely broad range of approaches within a single volume, ranging from the psychological, through the computational, to the musicological. Authors were selected from presenters at the Third International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition (Liege, 1994) to illustrate the wide range of perspectives now being adopted in studying how humans make and respond to music.
The book is divided into four sections, each illustrating a different approach to the topic. Section 1, Musicological Approaches, illustrates the role of analysis and ethnomusicology in understanding cultural determinants of musical behavior. Section 2, Developmental Approaches, charts what is known about the acquisition of musical competence, from pre-birth through to the expert performer. Section 3, Biological Approaches, examines the evidence now accumulating about specific areas of the brain which control musical thinking and behavior. Section 4, Acoustical and Computational Approaches, examine how neurological, behavioral and artificial intelligence approaches are converging to shed light on fundamental processes in auditory perception. Finally, Section 5, Structural Approaches, highlights important developments in how we conceptualize the way in which musical structures are represented in the mind.
This book provides an up-to-date entry into major preoccupations of current music psychology, suitable for advanced undergraduates, graduate students, and researchers in the field.

This book is a selection of papers from a conference which took place at the University of Keele in July 1982. The conference was an extraordinarily enjoyable one, and we would like to take this opportunity of thanking all participants for helping to make it so. The conference was intended to allow scholars working on different aspects of symbolic behaviour to compare findings, to look for common ground, and to identify differences between the various areas. We hope that it was successful in these aims: the assiduous reader may judge for himself. Several themes emerged during the course of the conference. Some of these were: 1. There is a distinction to be made between those symbol systems which attempt, more or less directly, to represent a state of affairs in the world (e. g. language, drawing, map and navigational skill) and those in which the representational function is complemented, if not overshadowed, by properties of the symbol system itself, and the systematic inter-relations that symbols can have to one another (e. g. music, mathematics). The distinction is not absolute, for the nature of all symbolic skills is, in part, a function of the structure of the symbolic system employed. Nonetheless, this distinction helps us to understand some common acquisition difficulties, such as that experienced in mathematics, where mental manipulation of symbols can go awry if a child assumes too close a correspondence between mathematical symbols and the world they represent. 2.

What are the mental processes involved in listening to, performing, and composing music? What is involved in 'understanding' a piece of music? How are such skills acquired?

Questions such as these form the basis of the cognitive psychology of music. The author addresses these questions by surveying the growing experimental literature on the subject. The topics covered will be of interest to psychologists, as windows onto a human cognitive skill of some complexity that is only now beginning to receive the attention devoted to such skills as language. They are also relevant to musicians who are seeking to understand the psychological bases of their skills.

The author does not simply review existing research, but takes a critical look at what has been achieved in the subject, introducing such topics as composition and musical skill in non-literate cultures. He draws freely on his own knowledge and experience as a practising musician, as well as a psychologist, to provide an overview that is scholarly and also accessible to the general reader.