Music and the Mind

Catalog description

This course presents an overview of the psychology of music. Students will consider a diverse array of topics including emotional responses, expressive performance, implication-realization, memory and attention, development, creativity, special musical abilities and deficits, musical preferences, and music therapy. Along with learning about what psychologists have discovered about how composers, performers, and listeners create and process music, students will also discuss how psychologists study music in the laboratory and the challenges involved in designing experiments and interpreting data. Thus, along with reading a textbook, students will also read cutting-edge research and discuss how to empirically investigate musical experience.