Film music influences how viewers relate to movie characters.

Film music has powerful aesthetic effects on the perception and understanding of screen content, but does it also influence viewers' sense of connection with movie characters thereby creating antecedents for an experience of empathy? Participants viewed clips showing characters' neutral or ambiguous reaction to an event, person, or object. Viewers rated character likability and their certainty about characters' thoughts in three conditions: thriller music, melodrama music, and no music. The effect of music conditions differed significantly from the no music condition. Compared to melodramatic music, thriller music significantly lowered likability and certainty about characters' thoughts. During subsequent cued recall of screen content, thriller music increased anger attributions and lowered sadness attributions, while melodramatic music increased love attributions and lowered fear attributions. The study provides evidence that film music can influence character likability and the certainty of knowing the character's thoughts, which are antecedents of empathetic concern and emphatic accuracy. Thus film music may be regarded as modulating antecedents of empathic concern and empathic accuracy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Design of weave patterns: when engineering textiles meets music

This study aims to present a novel approach in creation of new patterns for woven textiles, which is based on musical scores. Such a design method has not been presented in the literature. It is based on the similarity between the music notation and the 2D coding of woven patterns. Theoretical and practical details on application of the design method are discussed. Weave patterns, based on famous musical pieces, are presented together with exemplary color designs. The four ‘musical’ patterns and their color designs could be considered as successful first attempts that open up additional opportunities for design and production of original, unique fabrics.     

Expertise and age-related changes in components of intelligence.

In a sample of 263 male GO players at 48 levels of expertise and ranging from 18 to 78 years of age, it was found that factors of expertise deductive reasoning (EDR) and expertise working memory (EWM) were independent of factors of fluid reasoning (Gf) and short-term working memory (STWM) that, along with cognitive speed (Gs), have been found to characterize decline of intelligence in adulthood. The main effects of analyses of cross-sectional age differences indicated age-related decline in EDR and EWM as well as in Gf, STWM, and Gs. However, interaction and partialing analyses indicated that decline in EDR and EWM decreased to no decline with increase in level of expertise. The results thus suggest that with increase in factors known to raise the level of expertise—particularly, intensive, well-designed practice there may be no age-related decline in the intelligence that is measured in the abilities of expertise. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

王季烈“主腔说”理论之探讨

著名昆曲理论家王季烈在《螾庐曲谈》中首次提出"主腔说"。"主腔说"的提出具有一定的时代意义和理论意义。后人在王季烈"主腔说"理论基础上,对其作了更详尽和科学的阐释,并放之于实际创作中,切实地解决了昆曲曲牌的联套问题。     

Physician decision making and cardiac risk: Effects of knowledge, risk perception, risk tolerance, and fuzzy processing.

Despite training, professionals sometimes make serious errors in risky decision making. The authors investigated judgments and decisions for 9 hypothetical patients at 3 levels of cardiac risk, comparing student and physician groups varying in domain-specific knowledge. Decisions were examined regarding whether they deviated from guidelines, how risk perceptions and risk tolerances determined decisions, and how the latter differed for knowledge groups. More knowledgeable professionals were better at discriminating levels of risk according to external correspondence criteria but committed similar errors in disjunctive probability judgments, violating internal coherence criteria. Also, higher knowledge groups relied on fewer dimensions of information than did lower knowledge groups. Consistent with fuzzy-trace theory, experts achieved better discrimination by processing less information and made sharper all-or-none distinctions among decision categories. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

浅谈我国音乐教育中的母语教育

面对新的国际形势,弘扬中华文化,正确理解和把握我国音乐教育界提出的“以中华文化为母语的音乐教育观”。把中国音乐文化传统作为当代中华音乐文化和音乐教育发展的重要基础和资源,对我国音乐教育中的母语教育方面谈一些粗浅的看法。     

大学生音乐教育现状初探

音乐教育属于审美教育范畴,是全面素质教育的重要途径和手段,通过对在校大学生音乐知识的调查可以反观中小学音乐教育的现状及存在的问题,针对大学生音乐知识薄弱的现状,必须加强音乐素质教育.要加强引导,让大学生多欣赏古典音乐和民族音乐,提高审美情趣和创造美鉴赏美的能力.     

Pitch Detection Enhancement Employing Music Prediction

Pitch detection methods are widely used for extracting musical data from digital signals. A review of those methods is presented in the paper. Since musical signals may contain noise and distortion, detection results can be erroneous. In this paper a new method employing music prediction to support pitch determination is introduced. This method was developed in order to override disadvantages of standard pitch detection algorithms. The new approach utilizes signal segmentation and pitch prediction based on musical knowledge extraction employing artificial neural networks. Signal segmentation allows for estimating the pitch for a single note as a whole, therefore suppressing errors in transient and decay phases. Pitch prediction helps correcting pitch estimation errors by tracking musical context of the analyzed signal. As it was shown in the experimental results, pitch estimation errors may be reduced by using both signal segmentation and music prediction techniques.