So without further ado, I give you a report on SIMAL2012 by Sebastian Fikel:

Music and language share common neural resources; this is sometimes quit obvious, for example: the same muscles (abdominal, intercostal, extrinsic and intrinsic laryngeal muscles, etc.) are used for speaking and singing and therefore similar sensorimotor areas are involved (Callan et al., 2006; Riecker et al., 2000). However, we also know that the involvement of other areas can vary very much depending on the modality of the task, e.g. as music or language task. (Wildgruber et al., 2000; Ackermann and Riecker, 2004).

To disentangle this complex interaction of task modality, task requirements and involved neural resources and networks we (Fabian Tomaschek, Sebastian Finkel, Rossitza Draganova and Lena Classen) initiated a workshop called “Segregation and Integration in Music and Language”. The primary idea was to bring together researchers from the fields of language and music cognition and enhance exchange of current results and ideas.

Moreover we invited 3 Keynote speaker (Stefan Koelsch, Christo Pantev and Erich Schröger), who are eminent researchers in their field, as well as 4 speakers (Daniela Sammler, Carsten Wolters, Mathias Sharinger and Ingo Hertrich) who gave talks especially dedicated to newly develop neuroscientific and computational methodologies in music and language research.

The workshop lasted two days, starting Friday morning with the usual registration. The first session started with a keyote given by Stefan Koelsch, Professor at the Free University of Berlin talking about share neural network underlying the processing of semantics in music and language. He argued, that the eletrophysiological signals N5 and N400 represent the processing of musical meaning. Referring the N5 to intra-musical meaning and the N400 to extra musical meaning (iconic, indexical and symbolic sign quality).

After each keynote, 20 minute short talks followed which where choosen from about 50 applicants. Each session was in a way organised that themes of the keynote, the short talks and the technical talk, fitted into a bigger frame (e.g. music, language, pure tones). We tried to have a break at least every 90 minutes, to keep the attention up and give the possibility to exchange very current thoughts about the last talks. Furthermore, each session included some methodological and technical oriented talks giving insight into recent methods and developments.

The second keynote was given by Christo Pantev, Professor from the University of Münster. He explained the possible negative results of auditory plasticity which can lead to tinnitus. He showed data from his lab how this maladaptive mechanism could possibly be alleviated by customized music training which is based on lateral inhibition and plasticity of the human auditory cortex. First results demonstrate that this stratgy is capable of reducing tinitus related neural activity and reducing subjective tinnitus perception.

The last keynote was giving on saturday morning by Erich Schröger, Professor from the University of Leipzig. He presented his conceptual model termed the Auditory Event Representation System (AERS). This model tries to combine the models of auditory scene analysis and event/deviation detection into a common framework. He argued this could be achieved in predicting upcoming events on the basis of neural representations describing temporal regularities.

Although this was only a very brief and personal review of the three keynote talks of the conference, hopefully it will arouse some interest making a possible second music and language workshop in 2014 even more successful.

I am very happy that Vicky gave me the chance to give a short conference review about the „Segregation and Integration in Music and Language“ workshop here at the University of Tübingen organized.

Thanks Sebastian, much appreciated!

Pablo Picasso. Three Musicians. 1921

And we learned a lot  using this method. If it did not work, if it did not throw up fascinating group differences, then it would have disappeared a long time ago. But the fact is that it fostered decades of interesting breakthroughs in our understanding of how exposure to music and musical training can influence our cognitive abilities, brain function and even our approach to life. But even those who advoate this approach will admit, it has limitations.

It is time to think of a new way to to explore musicality, that will allow us to build upon the findings we have already acquired in comparing musicians and non-musicians.

So where do we go from here? Let’s think of a few stimulating questions:

Is years of training the only way to define a musician? What about the type of instrument they play and their experiences of practise and performance?A few years ago there was a series of really interesting papers in the music education field that looked at the differences in practise and learning strategies, and how they mapped onto achievements (e.g. studies by Stephanie Pitts and Gary McPherson) Why are we not considering those types of factors in general musicianship?

And, moreover, how useful is a comparison between musical experts and the rest of us; those of us who bash out a few tunes now and again or who enjoy belting out a good tune in the shower?  I, for example, had a very unique adn rousing version of ‘Dance with Me Tonight‘ going on this morning.Yep, I know, not very sophisticated. But boy, that song has great bounce!

Studies of musical expertise have their place in the academic literature, no doubt, as does any examiniation of human expertise. For example, studies of memory experts proved to be key to unlocking the secrets of mnemonics, tricks that we can use to expand what we hold in memory. And the exploration of such techinques, finding out how they work and why, teaches us a lot about the way that memory functions in general.You can see more about that in my video lecture on musical memory here.

But music is part of human life in so many ways, and musical expertise is just one of the ways that we express our musical abiliites, passions and curisoities. How can we reflect ‘musicality’ in the wider sense so that we can understand more about how our engagment with musical sounds in mulitple ways influences the way we develop both in brain and body?

There are a number of new techniques and tests that are emerging in the literature which promise to take both the study of expertise and musicality to a new level. I can’t talk about them all here, and no doubt there are some that I have  not come across as yet. If you know of any then please feel free to leave a comment and let us know. But here is a short list of 3 new studies in this area:

1) The Goldsmiths Musical Sophistication Index or Gold MSI. The Gold MSI has been developed with the BBC and the initial data was gathered through their ‘How Musical Are You?’ project, which you can still take if you like. The aim is to create a battery of tests that measures all the everyday parts of musicality experience that go beyond musical training and performance. There are also tests that look at general aspects of musical perception and memory, which can develop simply through exposure to music. The test is still in development but it is an exciting move towards a more universal measure of musicality

2) The Musical Ear Training (MET) test was developed by researchers at the University of Aarhus in Denmark. On each trial participants hear two melodies and must say ‘same’ or ‘different’. The test measures melody and rhythm perception. This is important for our idea of general musicality, as hearing skills can develop through simple musical exposure as well as through training. Click here for access to the original paper. The 20 minute test  gives a continum of ability across both musicians and nonmusicians, so it may prove a valuable tool for measuring musicality even if a person has never picked up an instrument.

Musical experience shapes human brainstem encoding of linguistic pitch patterns

3) The Brain responses. There are a number of imaging and EEG techniques that allow sceintists to distinguish degrees of auditory brain response; to quickly assess the power of your musical ear and musical brain. These include the brain’s response to oddball sounds in the environment, as quickly as 100ms after the sound is heard (the MMN paradigm by Peter Vuust) and the frequency following response of the brain stem (Image: see work by Nina Kraus). It is too early yet to determine whether these techniques will equip us with another measure of musicality (or even potential musicality) but the possibilties are exciting.

In the end, I think it is unlikely that any one test can capture the whole concept of how musical we are, and that is why it is great to have options that explore our ears, brains, memories, habits and hobbies. The new age of defining and understanding musicality will allow us to explore how real everyday musical exposure, curiosity and passion influences the way we think and behave.

And, just to finish, here is the source of inspiration for this weeks blog and, as a result, my current earworm. A spot of Dylan, though a cover in this case as you can’t get the original for free. Wishing you a lovely week, wherever the music takes you.

This week I am posting about a unique PhD opportunity that is coming up in my lab (Music, Mind and Brain), to work with me and my boss on our earworm project. You can read more about our project by glancing through my previous blogs (put ‘earworm’ into the search box above) or by looking at our uni site or our online data collection point.

The job post details are as follows:

PhD Studentship Investigating Spontaneous Musical Imagery (Earworms)

Goldsmiths, University of London – Psychology

Firstly, I should say that I am under quite strict instructions not to tell everybody how lovely Aarhus is – otherwise everyone might go there! I have been there 4 times now and it is a great place for a city break. On the coast, with beautiful countryside, the best sushi I have eaten anywhere, lively music scene, and the friendliest people you could ever hope to meet. But, as I said, please don’t tell everyone

Peter Vuust, Professor, (and amazing jazz bass player and composer) is the coordinator of Music in the Brain in Aarhus. The group contains members from several institutions in the city including:Royal Academy of Music, Aarhus: Center of Functionally Integrative Neuroscience (CFIN): Department of Psychology, University of Aarhus: Department of Music, University of Aarhus

The Music in the Brain lab is an exciting and lively place to visit. There are a large number of PhD students, postdocs and research assistants all working on a very wide variety of interesting ‘music in the brain’ projects. For example, there is research into musical ear training for cochlear implant users (Dr Bjørn Petersen), multi-modal pitch integration (Cecilie Møller), musical competence and musical responses in autism (Line Gebauer), and so on.You can also read all about Peter Vuust’s varied publications and interests by following the links on his website. I have told him recently he is my favourite ‘man of stories’, as I love the way he talks about his research.

During my all too brief visit I also chatted to a number of students about their fascinating projects into music and animacy, cross cultural perception of surprise in music, and the nature of absolute pitch. I know these guys only by their first names so I am really sorry that I cannot list them here but if you are interested in these areas and would like to hear more than please contact Peter (pv – at- musik-kons.dk) and I am sure that he will put you in touch with the relevant researcher.

So a big thanks again to my kind and generous hosts in Aarhus. I will find a way to return, for sure.

The report was authored and carried out by Apul Parikh, cosmetic surgeon at John Radcliffe Hospital Oxford. As far as I can tell, this is not a published paper but rather a report into series of medical trials on 100 patients where half had surgery in the standard operating environment under local anaesthetic and half had the same experience except that they heard music in the theatre.

The results were an improvement in anxiety levels during surgery and during recovery, as measured by a standard anxiety scale and by respiration rates (lower in the music group).

The findings are in line with a series of reports into the effects of music medicine which have been summarised by the Cochrane reports. I have written about these reports before and you can read the full blog on music medicine trials here. Essentially, the reports looked at clinical trials of music medicine and found the following:

1)      Music for heart disease. There were 23 trials identified by the review. Music therapy was found to lower heart rate, systolic and diastolic blood pressure, and anxiety. However, the ‘quality’ of the evidence was described as weak.

2)      Music for ventilated patients. Eight trials were identified. Music therapy was found to lower heart rate, respiration rate, and anxiety.

3)      Music for end of life care. Five studies were identified which included 175 patients. Music therapy was found to improve quality of lfe.

4)     Music for acquired brain injury. Seven studies with 184 participants were identified, although these typically included a range of therapeutic interventions. Music therapy was associated with improving gate velocity, stride length and stride symmetry,

5)      Music in oncology. The largest group of trials at 30 were found in this category, comprising over 1891 patients. Music therapy was found to reduce heart rate, lower respiration rates, blood pressure, and to reduce pain and improve mood and quality of life.

At the time of the Cochrane reports the authors emphasised the need for more randomised controlled trials in music medicine, in order to clearly deliniate the effects of music in hopsital and clinic settings. There was a need to take more rigorous details of patient details such as gender, age, prefered coping strategies and medical history. There was also a call for more clear information about delivery treatment issues, such as dosage, frequency, timing, and length, in order to give translational information for clinical practice. Does this new study get us any closer to these goals?

As interesting as the new result may be, and as much as the findings are in line with previous similar literature (LePage et al. 2001; Stevens, 1990), I fear there are still several issues regarding the report that could be improved. I can find no patient details, either to describe the demographics of the participants, their medical history or their surgical interventions. These details may exist of course, but at this stage it is hard to draw any conclusions regarding the trial population.

There is also little detail about the music that was heard during the trials. Dr Parikh is quoted as say that easy listening and classical were the popular types of music such as Vivaldi and Frank Sinatra, which suggests to me that people may have been able to chose the music they prefered. It would be interesting to know more about this, as there is a growing understanding that patient choice of music is critical since our responses to music are so individual (based on our tastes, music listening history and life experiences). Was there a limited choice or free choice?

I recently had a MRI scan and was offered the chance to listen to music, from a limited selection of artists similar to that offered in the study. It is interesting and rather exciting to see that various hospitals are beginning to offer music for patient comfort, especially in MRI where specialised equipment (e.g. non metal headphones) would be necessary. But I have not heard of a standard clinical setting that allows a patient to bring their own music, except in the case of surgeons who can play their own favourite music while operating. Does anyone know of any cases? I would be interested to hear from you.

My final concern is that there seems to be not a great deal of controlled research investigating the effects of music in these environments. And I, for one, would really like to see more. One of the basic issues with the most recent study is that there is no control for the presence of music. This makes it impossible to say whether the effects were related to the music in particular; they could have been the result of simply adding sound to the environment.

Music medicine is still in its relative infancy, but as a complementary approach (NB. not alternative!) it is growing in popularity and in its evidence base. My hope for the future is that studies will adopt the practices of rigorous randomised controlled trials so we can better understand how music affects different people in various medical settings and therfore, allow us to learn how we can optimally use music to increase comfort and relieve anxiety.

I have written a blog before about how to prepare for a music psychology master course like ours. I have also written a little piece on the types of job you might go on to enjoy once you have finished. But Thomas also wanted to know a bit more about the other end of the road – what is it like to be a music psychology academic (lecturer). So this is the subject of today’s blog.

I have not been a lecturer for long but I think I have had a taste of just about everything the job entails in the early stages. And the things that I have not experienced personally I have seen  in my colleagues. So let’s start by talking about the responsibilities. An academic in any discipline has three main tasks, and one that runs along underneath all three:

1. To do research and produce papers
2. To write grants and produce money
3. To teach and produce happy students

And the secret everyday task is, of course, administration. All these three tasks require a degree of management of resources, people and working with the administration within your institution. At the end of the day you are part of your university or lab and it is important to do your bit and contribute to the life of the establishment, as well as to represent your institution wherever you go.

The extent to which your daily effort goes into each of the three main jobs depends on a) the stage of your career and b) the type of place where you work.

a)  Early career lecturers will typically have more teaching responsibilities than more established staff and less time for research. But I am assured that this changes as time goes by! And there may be times in your career where you are able to devote yourself to research, for example during a fellowship grant or sabbatical.

b) In a typical university you will do a balance of all the three jobs, unless you are in a special period of work as discussed in the above section. But all over the world there are different types of universities that focus almost exclusively on either research or teaching. So if you find out that you prefer one of these activities then you can aim for either a research institution or a teaching college.

So, with all this in mind, let’s deal with the three jobs one at a time.  

1) Research is what most people see as the traditional job of a scientist and is what you will find yourself doing for most of your PhD. It is a cyclic experience which goes from having an idea, through to development, testing, analysis, and finally writing up a report that hopefully makes it to a journal publication. The number of publications you produce is one way in which people judge your performance as an academic.

You will need to keep up with the latest ideas and research to make sure you are contributing to current theories and practice. You will probably work as part of a team, whether it is with other academics (in your own country and overseas) or with students/ research assistants. In both cases, people skills are very important. And then there is one of the ‘perks’ of the job – conferences. I love visiting different parts of the world and meeting with fellow academics who have similar interests. I find them inspiring and always make new friends.

2) Another way in which your job performance is assessed is in terms of how much money you bring in to your institution. This means writing grants. The biggest grants are for doing research or even setting up your own teaching course or laboratory, but then there are smaller grants for things like workshops, teaching and conference travel. Every little bit helps as it all means you are proving that you can support yourself and your institution.

Writing grants is an art form and it takes practice. It is a good idea to start as soon as possible and to get advice from someone who is good at it. I’m lucky in that my boss is brilliant at it. So while it used to be rather upsetting when my efforts came back covered in red corrections, I now understand that it was a learning experience. Just like everything in academia – you will never stop learning!

3) Ahhhh teaching. This is probably the one reason that most people decide that they want to be a lecturer in the first place. That was my motivation from day one. And I love teaching still, even when it is a subject that is not my direct research interest, which is often the case.

Of course the actual teaching – in front of a large group of students -  actually takes up quite a small amount of the time. A lot more time will be spent on preparation, meetings and marking. But for me it is still all worth it. I really enjoy teaching both on a group and individual level, especially working with a student on a project.

So that is it – a little summary of the job of a music psychology academic (and academia in general). What you really need is an infinitely curious mind, a passion for your subject and an interest in communicating your work and/or discipline to students, colleagues and the public.

And of course the most important thing: an understanding that this job is a life-long commitment to learning. You will never know everything; the fun is in the exploration!

Today will not be a blog in the traditional sense, but instead I would like to give you access to a link for a lecture of mine that was just finished a few weeks ago. It is an online accessible discussion of what I find fascinating about musical memory. It covers 3 main areas:

1) Is musical memory unique? (i.e. how is it different to other types of memory, such as verbal memory?)

2) How does musical memory work? (i.e. how do musicians remember hours of music for performance)

3) What happens when memory begins to fail, and why does musical memory often survive so well in these cases?

There are not simple answers to any of these questions; if there were then I would be out of a job! But it is fascinating to explore these questions as they can reveal interesting insights into the ways in which we process music and also how our minds work in a larger sense.

The link is to a safe site called Prezi, and the lecture is in the form of a multi-media series of slides. You will see sections of me talking in different areas of Goldsmiths campus where I work, including on the roof (don’t ask….I was very careful not to look down!), combined with different videos from sites like YouTube.

The videos include musicians talking about their memory preparation tricks, memory experts talking about their skills and the legendary Professor Oliver Sacks talking about the case of Clive Wearing, probably the worst case of memory loss (amnesia) ever recorded in science.

You can play the different parts of the lecture (and go back if you like) by using the control buttons on the screen.

Big thanks go to Fotis who helped me edit everything together and to a lovely media student, whose name I have sadly forgotten, who helped to film everything last year.

I hope you like it!  http://prezi.com/caeu7ls3yfr5/how-musical-memory-works/?auth_key=396599e06409e4af064cdea5b760fcb328c9880d

The day before the talk, as I travelled up  north on the train, I was hugely nervous. There is a unique type of anxiety associated with going back to your old Uni to give a talk in a room where you once sat in lectures for six years. I also felt a weight of expectation on my shoulders. All my past teachers would be there, my mentors. As would Dr Marcel Zentner, who I have written about in the past in this blog. I did not want to let any of them down.

I also had other business in York. Three of my Music, Mind and Brain masters students had travelled up from London to meet with their other dissertation supervisors; my PhD supervisors Professors Alan Baddeley and Graham Hitch. We had a great meeting discussing the students’ ideas and Alan and Graham offered lots of advice on conducting memory experiments. I know I am biased but anyone who has studied psychology will understand when I say that this advice is the best available!

The meeting went very well and we chatted happily for nearly 2 hours before we had to stop – my talk was due to start in 15 minutes…

I spent the last few minutes before the talk quietly reviewing my slides for a final time. My advice when preparing a talk is to spend the last few reviews just making sure that you are happy that you have at least one thing to say about each point and checking little things like spelling. Personally, I find that looking at this level of detail has a nice way of making sure I don’t focus too much on the ‘big picture’, which is getting on that stage and talking.

In my experience it is certainly not a good idea to start deleting things at this point as you probably have a good idea of what you are going to say and last minute changes can throw off your preparations.

I made my way to the hall and set up my slides, making sure that my sounds a) worked and b) would not deafen anyone. In the end, of course, two of the sound files in the presentation didn’t work…even though they had worked every single time in rehearsal. Isn’t that always the way?!

That is another good tip for talks: Never rely on embedded video or sounds. Work on the assumption that it would be ‘nice’ if these types of files worked, but ensure that you have a back-up in case they fail. What I usually do is put the files on the desktop before I start the talk. Then you have the option to duck out of your slides for a moment and play them if you really need to do so.

Here are my slides for you, dear reader. I hope you enjoy them!

The talk was essentially a 45 minute review of the last three years of my life studying congenital amusia with my boss Dr Lauren Stewart. I covered our studies of pitch perception, pitch memory, speech detection, visuo-spatial skills, and melodic expectancy.

Sitting now in a cafe in York station I can say that I really appreciated the chance to give this talk. Lauren and I have just completed her three year amusia grant and the lecture was an opportunity to summarise all the things we have worked on together, alongside other super members of the lab group.

I can’t believe I have been in London for 3 and a half years now. It seems only yesterday that I handed in my PhD and stepped onto a one way train to London. But I am very glad that I found the Music, Mind and Brain group at Goldsmiths and that Lauren decided to take me on as a postdoc.

This seems a very appropriate moment for me to express my gratitude for all she has done for me so far. Thanks Boss.

It has been a fantastic three years. Full of highs and a couple of lows, but I certainly feel like we have learned a huge amount about amusia, met some wonderful people and learned some important lessons on my quest to be an academic. As my grandma puts it, to one day have a real job!

What now, dear reader? Well, the talk marked the end of one era in a way but the next chapter is already underway. I am currently working as a temporary lecturer at Goldsmiths and co-director of the masters course in Music, Mind and Brain, as maternity cover for Lauren. Come June, she will return and we will begin another 3 year grant in a new field; earworms.

This does not mean that the amusia work is over by any means. I have several ideas for future projects that can be run with our wonderful assistants or master students, and, at the lecture, someone suggest another really fascinating new experiment. The story of amusia here will continue…

One of the consequences of this great mix is that I get to supervise lots of different masters projects. I thought I would give you a flavour of the projects I am overseeing this year, so you can get an idea of what sort of things can go on in music psychology.

This summary is anonymous but in alphabetical order – no preferential ranking is implied!

1)      Music and movement

One of my students is a physiotherapist and wants to investigate the effects of music on movement. He wants to move beyond a traditional finger tapping paradigm and measure a behaviour that is far more relevant to his clinical practice – walking. He intends to look at the effects of music familiarity and liking upon people’s ability to walk to a beat.

2)      Musical ‘shape’

This project is running in collaboration with Dr Helen Prior and Dr Dan Tidhar at Kings College. The student will be testing how many different conceptual ideas of musical shape (including performance dynamics and cultural traditions) influence a person’s ability to entrain (tap) to a beat.

3)      Music and sexiness

This project represents a second collaboration with Kings College, this time with Professor Daniel Leech Wilkinson. Our student will be looking at the question of whether witnessing an expert musical performance can have an effect on how attractive we find a person. It is essentially a test of the sexual selection theory of music evolution.

4)      Musical working memory

This year I have been working with a student whose interests in music and working memory are very similar to my own. She is interested in whether there are similarities to the way that language and music are processed in memory. She is developing updated (and much better!) versions of my old experiments, with the assistance of Professors Alan Baddeley and Graham Hitch.

5)      Musical quality

Linn are a company who produce high fidelity studio sound files of music and they are working with one of my students on a project that will determine whether there is an effect of music recording ‘quality’ on peoples’ responses to music and listening choices.

6)      Music for little ones

Jo Jingles provide parent and child music activity classes in the UK, Ireland and Australia. They have been kind enough to allow one of my students into their classes for a few months to observe the lessons and to take some measures of the children’s development using standard behavioural tests and parental report.

7)      Musicians’ memory

I have one ‘team’ project this year, consisting of two students are working together. They are interested in whether musicians show superior memory skills and have designed a large memory battery in order to test various hypotheses about how and why musicians might show improvements to their memory.

8)      Musical memory and perception in the brain

This year will mark my first involvement with a tDCS paradigm, in the form of two projects that I am running with Dr Michel Banissy. The students intend to use the brain stimulation technique in order to determine whether certain brain areas are involved in 1) musical memory processing and 2) pitch perception.

I hope that brief overview gives you an idea of the wealth of projects that are possible when you study music psychology. All the students have been able to follow their personal interests and this always makes for the best projects. I will keep you updated as to their progress as results emerge over the next few months. Should be a fascinating summer!

It is not a surprising fact that speakers acquire vocabulary by watching films or TV, but there is not a great deal of evidence that listening to music has a similar influence. On top of this, the present paper argues that hip-hop is especially problematic as a test case for an effect on language development due to a number of issues:

1) Hip-hop albums rarely include lyric sheets (more likely in pop and rock albums)

2) The fast pace of rappers can often impair comprehension of the words uttered.

3) The voice quality, often in shouting timbre, can also impair comprehension of the exact lyrics.

4) Hip-hop is full of atypical syntax, double entendres, and deliberately obscure language, which can include mixtures of two or more languages.

So there are a number of factors that mean that hip-hop in particular creates ‘excruciatingly difficult’ conditions for lyric comprehension and transcription, and subsequent vocabulary acquisition (Devlin, 2010). Given these difficulties, why might we suspect that hip-hop is influencing language?

Young adults listen to more music than previously recorded generations in America and hip-hop has now evolved into widely available mainstream music. It is also one of the most popular video media music genres and there are a number of websites devoted to documenting the slang and ‘urban language’ that is used by different hip-hop artists.

The study set out to test 166 non-African American young people’s understanding of ‘African American English (AAE)’ terms, which are frequently used in hip-hop. She hypothesised that a higher level of familiarity with hip-hop would be correlated with a higher level of understanding of AAE vocabulary.

The dense multiple regression linear analysis revealed that three main factors predicted knowledge of hip-hop AAE: musical preferences, weak social ties to African Americans (negatively), and knowledge of popular culture. Specifically, listening to more hip-hop and knowledge of African American social culture (e.g. TV shows with a majority AAE speaking characters) were related to a higher comprehension of hip-hop AAE language. Conversely gender, age, ethnicity and hometown had no significant influences on the results.

 Did any particular artist have an influence? Did popularity of artists have an effect? The results revealed that general use of a hip-hop term most strongly predicted vocabulary acquisition; so the more that a word is used in a similar context by different artists, the more likely it is to be picked up in general language acquisition. But there was also a predictive relationship between preferred hip-hop artist and knowledge of words used by that artist.

Overall the results indicate that people can acquire vocabulary by listening to hip-hop and that this process is influenced by factors including cultural knowledge, social ties and musical preferences.

The next step would be to carry out controlled experimental studies to determine more reliably how exposure factors influence vocabulary acquisition. The author believes that knowledge of AAE used in hip-hop music may be linked to music listening preferences even if peer group usage and media exposure could be controlled in a systematic way. Further work can test this hypothesis more directly.

This study utilises a comprehensive modelling analysis and draws on linguistic methodological traditions to answer an ecologically valid and interesting psychological question – can the dynamic processes of language acquisition and evolution be influenced by exposure to music? The paper makes a good case for a direct influence in one of the most difficult vocal genres, hip-hop.

Article: Chesley, P. (2012) You know what it is: Learning words through listening to hip hop.