Secular Slowing of Auditory Simple Reaction Time in Sweden (1959-1985)

Correction and Validation of Time-Critical Behavioral Measurements over the Internet in the Stage Twin Cohort with More Than 7000 Participants

Behavioral data are increasingly collected over the Internet. This is particularly useful when participants’ own computers can be used as they are, without any modification that relies on their technical skills. However, the temporal accuracy in these settings is generally poor, unknown, and varies substantially across different hard- and software components. This makes it dubious to administer time-critical behavioral tests such as implicit association, reaction time, or various forms of temporal judgment/perception and production. Here, we describe the online collection and subsequent data quality control and adjustment of reaction time and time interval production data from 7127 twins sourced from the Swedish Twin Registry. The purposes are to (1) validate the data that are already and will continue to be reported in forthcoming publications (due to their utility, such as the large sample size and the twin design) and to (2) provide examples of how one might engage in post-hoc analyses of such data, and (3) explore how one might control for systematic influences from specific components in the functional chain. These possible influences include the type and version of the operating system, browser, and multimedia plug-in type

Repeated Listening Increases the Liking for Music Regardless of Its Complexity: Implications for the Appreciation and Aesthetics of Music

Psychological and aesthetic theories predict that music is appreciated at optimal, peak levels of familiarity and complexity, and that appreciation of music exhibits an inverted U-shaped relationship with familiarity as well as complexity. Because increased familiarity conceivably leads to improved processing and less perceived complexity, we test whether there is an interaction between familiarity and complexity. Specifically, increased familiarity should render the music subjectively less complex, and therefore move the apex of the U curve toward greater complexity. A naturalistic listening experiment was conducted, featuring 40 music examples (ME) divided by experts into 4 levels of complexity prior to the main experiment. The MEs were presented 28 times each across a period of approximately 4 weeks, and individual ratings were assessed throughout the experiment. Ratings of liking increased monotonically with repeated listening at all levels of complexity; both the simplest and the most complex MEs were liked more as a function of listening time, without any indication of a U-shaped relation. Although the MEs were previously unknown to the participants, the strongest predictor of liking was familiarity in terms of having listened to similar music before, i.e., familiarity with musical style. We conclude that familiarity is the single most important variable for explaining differences in liking among music, regardless of the complexity of the music.