The CIRMMT Audience Response System (CARS)
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Summary
The CARS was designed to capture behavioural and physiological responses of listeners in a live concert situation. Physiological measures include heart rate, electrodermal activity, breathing rate, and subtle contractions of the smiling and frowning muscles. These physiological signals have been shown to be related to emotional response, opening the door to exploring listeners’ emotional reactions to music in a realistic setting. Behavioural measures were entered on a 2D interface on an iPod.
Objectives
The aim was to understand what aspects of music (musical modes, tempo, timbral qualities, articulation) contribute to listener’s emotional reactions to music, how the time course of those reactions is related to musical structure, and how responses vary across different musical cultures.
Timeline
2009-2019
Status: Complete
Approach
Listeners were hooked up to electrodes for facial muscles and electrodermal response, a stretch band for breathing and a plethysmograph on the non-dominant hand for heart rate. They could respond on the iPod with the dominant hand. Real-time continuous data were collected from 64 people simultaneously and time-tagged with the music being heard. Time-series and activity analysis were used to relate the responses to the audio and analyzed score properties of the music.
Outcomes & Impact
This research was the first of its kind, linking physiological and behavioural responses to live music. It provides a window into how listeners’ conscious responses and unconscious physiological reactions are driven by music. It has also been used to compare responses to recorded music by Canadian and Congolese Pygmy listeners.
People Involved
- Stephen McAdams, McGill University (Canada)*
- Stuart Soroka, McGill University (Canada)
- Jon Wild, McGill University (Canada)*
- Nathalie Fernando, Université de Montréal (Canada)
- Marcus Pearce, Queen Mary University of London (UK)
- Geraint Wiggins, Queen Mary University of London (UK)
- Manuela Marin, University of Innsbruck (Austria)
- Bienvenu Kimbembé, Wildlife Conservation Society (Congo)
- Hauke Egermann, McGill University (Canada) (post-doc)*
- Meghan Goodchild, McGill University (Canada) (PhD)*
- David Sears, McGill University (Canada) (PhD)*
- Lorraine Chuen, McGill University (Canada) (Master’s)*
- Mattson Ogg, McGill University (Canada) (undergrad)
*CIRMMT regular, collaborator and student members
Partners
Academic collaborators
- Université de Montréal, Quebec, Canada
- Queen Mary University of London, UK
Granting Agencies / Funding Sponsors
- Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC)
- Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI)
- Fonds de recherche du Québec - Société et culture (FRQ-SC)
Resources
Various publications, datasets, creative works and reports resulted from this research.
Selected Publications
- Egermann, H., Pearce, M. T., Wiggins, G. A., & McAdams, S. (2013). Probabilistic models of expectation violation predict psychophysiological emotional responses to live concert music. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience, 13(2). https://doi.org/10.3758/s13415-013-0161-y
- Fernando, N., Egermann, H., Chuen, L., Kimbembé, B. & McAdams, S. (2014). Musique et émotion. Quand deux disciplines travaillent ensemble à mieux comprendre le comportement musical humain. Anthropologie et Société, 38(1),167-191. https://doi.org/10.7202/1025813ar
- Egermann, H., Fernando, N., Chuen, L., & McAdams, S. (2014). Music induces universal emotion-related psychophysiological responses: Comparing Canadian listeners to Congolese Pygmies. Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 1341. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01341
- Soroka, S., & McAdams, S. (2015). News, politics, and negativity. Political Communication, 32, 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2014.881942
- Chuen, L., Sears, D. & McAdams, S. (2016). Psychophysiological responses to auditory change. Psychophysiology, 53, 891-904. https://doi.org/10.1111/psyp.12633
- Ogg, M., Sears, D., Marin, M. & McAdams, S. (2017) Psychophysiological indices of music-evoked emotions in musicians. Music Perception, 35(1), 36-57. https://doi.org/10.1525/MP.2017.35.1.38
- Upham, F. & McAdams, S. (2018). Activity analysis and coordination in continuous responses to music. Music Perception, 35(3), 253-294. https://doi.org/10.1525/MP.2018.35.3.253
- Goodchild, M., Wild, J. & McAdams, S. (2019). Exploring emotional responses to orchestral gestures. Musicæ Scientiæ, 2(1), 25-49. https://doi.org/10.1177/1029864917704033
In the Press
The article in Frontiers in Psychology with Hauke Egermann, Lorraine Chuen and Nathalie Fernando at UdeM created quite a media storm with 66 news articles in 15 countries and 5 radio interviews in Canada and Germany:
- Scientific American - Podcast with Andrea Alfano
- The Globe & Mail (Canada)
- The Independent (UK)
- The Toronto Star (Canada)
- Daily Mail (UK)
- Süddeutsche Zeitung (Germany)
- CBC Cinq à six (Canada)
- CBC Home Run (Canada)
Keywords
Scientific/technological research, Physiological music response, Emotional reaction tracking, Live audience measurement, Behavioural data, EMG data