The Famous Melodies Task: Design, development, and use in studies of category knowledge
Department
Engineering Management and Systems Engineering
Major
Engineering Management
Research Advisor
Belfi, Amy
Advisor's Department
Psychological Science
Funding Source
Psychological Science Department
Abstract
Normalized stimuli are essential tools for cognitive neuroscience research. For example, the International Affective Picture System is a widely used set of visual images that have been rated on characteristics such as emotional valence and arousal. Such stimulus sets have been used to measure, for example, the ability of patients with brain damage to recognize and name visual objects. Similarly, musical melodies have been used to investigate processes such as naming abilities in patients with aphasia and memory in patients with Alzheimer’s disease. However, there is no normed set of musical melody stimuli, preventing consistency across studies. With this in mind, this proposed research will create a normed set of musical stimuli for researchers to use in future studies. A range of famous musical melodies (N=100) will be rated and characterized on several variables (e.g., complexity, age of acquisition, valence) by large online sample (N=500) using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk.
Biography
Kaelyn, an undergraduate student at Missouri S&T, has developed a great interest in both engineering and neuroscience. For her high school senior thesis project, she chose to study the effects of music on the brain in Alzheimer’s and Dementia patients. Her fascination with the subject led her to become a research assistant at the university for Dr. Amy Belfi. Together, they are exploring the effects of music and the brain. While working to prepare the research for peer-reviewed scientific journals, Kaelyn will continue to pursue her Engineering Management degree with a minor in Cognitive Neuroscience with plans to graduate in the year 2020.
Research Category
Social Sciences
Presentation Type
Poster Presentation
Document Type
Poster
Award
Research poster session, First place
Location
Upper Atrium
Presentation Date
17 Apr 2018, 9:00 am - 12:00 pm
The Famous Melodies Task: Design, development, and use in studies of category knowledge
Upper Atrium
Normalized stimuli are essential tools for cognitive neuroscience research. For example, the International Affective Picture System is a widely used set of visual images that have been rated on characteristics such as emotional valence and arousal. Such stimulus sets have been used to measure, for example, the ability of patients with brain damage to recognize and name visual objects. Similarly, musical melodies have been used to investigate processes such as naming abilities in patients with aphasia and memory in patients with Alzheimer’s disease. However, there is no normed set of musical melody stimuli, preventing consistency across studies. With this in mind, this proposed research will create a normed set of musical stimuli for researchers to use in future studies. A range of famous musical melodies (N=100) will be rated and characterized on several variables (e.g., complexity, age of acquisition, valence) by large online sample (N=500) using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk.
