Paolo Ammirante

• PhD
• Toronto Metropolitan University

Where does a listener's anticipation of the next note in an unfamiliar melody come from? One view is that expectancies reflect innate grouping biases; another is that expectancies reflect statistical learning through previous musical exposure. Listening experiments support both views but in limited contexts, e.g., using only instrumental renditions...

This study aims to clarify unresolved questions from two earlier studies by McGarry et al. Exp Brain Res 218(4): 527–538, 2012 and Kaplan and Iacoboni Cogn Process 8: 103–113, 2007 on human mirror neuron system (hMNS) responsivity to multimodal presentations of actions. These questions are: (1) whether the two frontal areas originally identified by...

This study aims to clarify unresolved questions from two earlier studies (McGarry et al., 2012; Kaplan & Iacoboni, 2007) on human mirror neuron system (hMNS) responsivity to multimodal presentations of actions. These questions are: (1) whether the two frontal areas originally identified by Kaplan and Iacoboni (ventral premotor cortex [vPMC] and inf...

A previous study showed that ‘bright’ vowels (i.e. front vowels, which have higher second formants) are favoured for on-beat words in hip-hop music. Here we partially replicated these findings in a more diverse sample of pop songs from the Rolling Stone Corpus. Stressed monosyllables were classified by their vowel’s place of articulation and their...

In order to be heard over the low-frequency energy of a loud orchestra, opera singers adjust their vocal tracts to increase high-frequency energy around 3,000 Hz (known as a ‘‘singer’s formant’’). In rap music, rhymes often coincide with the beat and thus may be masked by loud, low-frequency percussion events. How do emcees (i.e., rappers) avoid ma...

The action observation network (AON) is a fronto-parietal network activated during the execution and observation of intentional movement. Activation of this network has primarily been observed using visual stimuli but some evidence exists for activation by auditory stimuli (e.g., McGarry et al., 2012). Even less is known about the extent to which t...

This chapter reviews research on music perception. The review has been divided into four major sections. The first section considers research on pitch perception. The second section considers research on perception of timbre, perception of consonance, the generation of melodic expectancies, and the representation of tonal hierarchies. The third sec...

Investigate effects of modality, familiarity, and biological plausibility (richness) of observation of musical stimuli in percussionists and non-percussionists

Music is intimately connected with the experience of rhythmic movement. This unique relation between music and movement depends on a complex set of timing skills that are developed throughout childhood. However, extraordinary cases of rhythmic prodigies seem to challenge our understanding of the normal course of motor development. This chapter exam...

Humans show a striking advantage for synchronizing movements with discretely timed auditory metronomes (e.g., clicking sounds) over temporally matched visual metronomes (e.g., flashing lights), suggesting enhanced auditory-motor coupling for rhythmic processing. Does the auditory advantage persist for other modalities (not just vision)? Here, nonmu...

Introduction: Movement-based expertise relies on precise timing of movements and the capacity to predict the timing of events. Music performance involves discrete rhythmic actions that adhere to regular cycles of timed events, whereas many sports involve continuous movements that are not timed in a cyclical manner. It has been proposed that the pre...

Skips are relatively infrequent in diatonic melodies and are compositionally treated in systematic ways. This treatment has been attributed to deliberate compositional strategies that are also subject to certain constraints. Study 1 showed that ease of vocal production may be accommodated compositionally. Number of skips and their distribution with...

Two experiments investigated deaf individuals' ability to discriminate between same-sex talkers based on vibrotactile stimulation alone. Nineteen participants made same/different judgments on pairs of utterances presented to the lower back through voice coils embedded in a conforming chair. Discrimination of stimuli matched for F0, duration, and pe...

Five experiments investigated the ability to discriminate between musical timbres based on vibrotactile stimulation alone. Participants made same/different judgments on pairs of complex waveforms presented sequentially to the back through voice coils embedded in a conforming chair. Discrimination between cello, piano, and trombone tones matched for...

Listening to music entails processes in which auditory input is automatically analyzed and classified, and conscious processes in which listeners interpret and evaluate the music. Performing music involves engaging in rehearsed movements that reflect procedural (embodied) knowledge of music, along with conscious efforts to guide and refine these mo...

Common Coding theory predicts that perceived action should resonate in produced action to which it bears some resemblance. Here we show that the qualities of motion commonly attributed to melodies are instantiated in motor plans that control timed movements. Participants attempted to tap a steady beat. Each tap triggered a sounded tone, and success...

The ideomotor principle predicts that perception will modulate action where overlap exists between perceptual and motor representations of action. This effect is demonstrated with auditory stimuli. Previous perceptual evidence suggests that pitch contour and pitch distance in tone sequences may elicit tonal motion effects consistent with listeners'...

In a previous continuation tapping study (Ammirante, Thompson, & Russo, in press), each tap triggered a discrete tone in a sequence randomly varying in pitch height and contour. Although participants were instructed to ignore the tones, pitch distance and pitch contour influenced intertap interval (ITI) and tap velocity (TV). The current study repl...