Ian Cro
Biographic Data
| ID | 242928 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ian Cro |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ian |
| FAMILY NAME | Cro |
| SIGNATURE | CRO I |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Cambridge |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2404-7765 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 36 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 34 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 36 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1993 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Watch this space
The ability to read and perform from notation is a fundamental skill in music performance. While for many musicians, staff notation is both transparent and flexible, a medium that can be used fluently and imaginatively, it is frequently experienced as complex and difficult – as a form of communication it is nobody’s first language. Stenberg and Cross showed that it is possible to make musical notation easier to read at sight; adding white spaces …
Trade-offs in Coordination Strategies for Duet Jazz Performances Subject to Network Delay and Jitter
Coordination between participants is a necessary foundation for successful human interaction. This is especially true in group musical performances, where action must often be temporally coordinated between the members of an ensemble for their performance to be effective. Networked mediation can disrupt this coordination process by introducing a delay between when a musical sound is produced and when it is received. This can result in significant…
Sharing uncertainty
The idea that science either can or does provide definitive ways of understanding music arose in the middle of the past century and almost immediately stimulated severe criticism, much of it from a perspective that came to elevate culture to the status to which science had been assumed to presume. It can be suggested that by the turn of the millennium the terms of this debate had begun to fragment. The idea of a positivistic science as the increm…
Singers' Realizations of Linguistic Tone in Chaozhou Song
This article explores singers' realization of linguistic tones of Chaozhou, a Southern Chinese tone language, in song performance. Analysis of a folk song sung by five singers reveals consistent realization of falling tones with a descending pitch within individual notes. The result suggests that Chaozhou singers may incorporate their spoken language experience into the notes they sing, irrespective of the different routes of learning to sing the…
Task-irrelevant auditory metre shapes visuomotor sequential learning
The ability to learn and reproduce sequences is fundamental to every-day life, and deficits in sequential learning are associated with developmental disorders such as specific language impairment. Individual differences in sequential learning are usually investigated using the serial reaction time task (SRTT), wherein a participant responds to a series of regularly timed, seemingly random visual cues that in fact follow a repeating deterministic …
Music in the digital age
Digital systems are reshaping how we engage with music as a sounding dimension of cultural life that is capable of being transformed into a commodity. At the same time, as we increasingly engage through digital media with each other and with virtual others, attributes of music that underpin our capacity to interact communicatively are disregarded or overlooked within those media. Even before the advent of technologies of music reproduction, music…
Music, Memory and Narrative
Skazka Skazok/Tale of Tales (Yuri Norstein, 1979) has delighted and puzzled audiences and critics ever since its release. It presents a series of beautifully-animated episodes that seem to make narrative sense at the micro-level and that appear to fit together as a whole, but leaves the audience bemused as to why this should be so. The article discusses the history and context of the film, arguing that the ways in which sound and, particularly, m…
Nonverbal Auditory Cues Allow Relationship Quality to be Inferred During Conversations
The claim that nonverbal cues provide more information than the linguistic content of a conversational exchange (the Mehrabian Conjecture) has been widely cited and equally widely disputed, mainly on methodological grounds. Most studies that have tested the Conjecture have used individual words or short phrases spoken by actors imitating emotions. While cue recognition is certainly important, speech evolved to manage interactions and relationship…
Music and Mental Imagery
Reopening the Conversation Between Music Psychology and Music Therapy
Although the fields of music psychology and music therapy share many common interests, research collaboration between the two fields is still somewhat rare. Previous work has identified that disciplinary identities and attitudes towards those in other disciplines are challenges to effective interdisciplinary research. The current study explores such attitudes in music therapy and music psychology. A sample of 123 music therapists and music psycho…
Perception of rhythmic agency for conversational labeling
There are well-understood benefits of designing intelligent interactive systems to support mixed-initiative interaction, in which there is a back-and-forth dynamic between user and system. We explore the effects of introducing rhythmic elements into this interaction, building on the phenomenon of conversational entrainment in human-to-human conversation. We demonstrate that well-chosen rhythms reduce user stress, increase confidence, and improve …
Reconsidering Empathy
The decline of empathy among health professional students, highlighted in the literature on health education, is a concern for medical educators. The evidence suggests that empathy decline is likely to stem more from structural problems in the healthcare system rather than from individual deficits of empathy. In this paper, we argue that a focus on direct empathy development is not effective and possibly detrimental to justice-oriented aims. Draw…
Analysing the relationship between tone and melody in Chaozhou songs
This paper uses corpus analysis to explore relationships between tone and melody in folk and contemporary songs in Chaozhou, a Chinese dialect with eight lexical tones and a wealth of tone sandhi. Results suggest that: (1) there is a high degree of correspondence between tone and melody in Chaozhou song; (2) tone sandhi influences tone-melody correspondence; (3) tones realised in context can be categorised into high-, mid-, and low-pitch groups a…
Joint rhythmic tapping elicits distinct emotions depending on tap timing and prior musical training
Music plays a significant role in human life. It is a form of art and entertainment and a powerful medium for interpersonal interaction. The experience of listening to music is often emotional. Previous research has elucidated many of the mechanisms that effect an emotional response in the listener. In contrast, much less is known about how joint musical engagement impacts emotions. Here we focus on synchronized rhythmic interaction, a fundamenta…
Music and Meaning
"[This edition] updates the original landmark text and provides a comprehensive review of the latest developments in this fast-growing area of research. Covering both experimental and theoretical perspectives, each of the 11 sections is edited by an internationally recognised authority in the area"--Jacket
The Acoustic and Auditory Contexts of Human Behavior
Sound is a crucial component of the human communicative toolkit; however, as a topic of research, it has been relatively neglected in archaeological method and theory. We propose that a framework requires to be developed in which inferences can be made about the significance of sound in the past that are not bounded by the particularities of current cultural contexts. Such a framework should be multidisciplinary and draw on what is known scientif…
Modelling unsupervised online-learning of artificial grammars
Artes, humanidades e as ciências
As ciências, por um lado, e as artes e humanidades, por outro, parecem comprometidas com maneiras diferentes de criar, compreender e usar o conhecimento. O papel da autoridade ou a validade do conhecimento nas ciências podem ser externalizados e generalizados através do processo de revisão por pares, ao passo que o conhecimento nas artes e humanidades é, muitas vezes, validado por meio da reputação, do apoio de especialistas e da influência diret…
Music and communication in music psychology
There is a general consensus that music is both universal and communicative, and musical dialogue is a key element in much music-therapeutic practice. However, the idea that music is a communicative medium has, to date, received little attention within the cognitive sciences, and the limited amount of research that addresses how and what music communicates has resulted in findings that appear to be of limited relevance to music therapy. This arti…
Long-term musical group interaction has a positive influence on empathy in children
Musical group interaction (MGI) is a complex social setting requiring certain cognitive skills that may also elicit shared psychological states. We argue that many MGI-specific features may also be important for emotional empathy, the ability to experience another person’s emotional state. We thus hypothesized that long-term repeated participation in MGI could help enhance a capacity for emotional empathy even outside of the musical context, thro…
“Does not compute”? Music as real-time communicative interaction
Viral irony
There is iron in irony (Ewart, G. 1980. Selected Poems 1933–1988 . New Directions Books: New York, NY). Acentral concern of public affairs is the notion of social justice and the scrutinizing of truth claims in public discourse where the power of social actors is asymmetrical. The mechanisms of rejection of truth claims tend to fall into two camps: direct and indirect. The direct method is simply a public rebuff, whereas the indirect method is to…
Music and cognitive evolution
This article suggests that several different factors converged to suggest that evolutionary thinking about music was likely to be unfruitful. Over much of the twentieth century, consideration of origins in the study of music moved away from any exploration of music's relationship to biology to re-focus on the historical relationships between contemporary Western musical theory and practice, and Western musical history, or on music's relationships…
The Oxford handbook of human motivation
This handbook collects together human motivation's top theorists and researchers to provide overviews of today's most noteworthy theories, topical chapters on phenomena from ego-depletion to flow, recent work on the biological bases of motivation, and applied in chapters on therapy, work, sport, education and relationships.
Incidental and online learning of melodic structure
Music and communication in music psychology
There is a general consensus that music is both universal and communicative, and musical dialogue is a key element in much music-therapeutic practice. However, the idea that music is a communicative medium has, to date, received little attention within the cognitive sciences, and the limited amount of research that addresses how and what music communicates has resulted in findings that appear to be of limited relevance to music therapy. This arti…
The Acoustic and Auditory Contexts of Human Behavior
Sound is a crucial component of the human communicative toolkit; however, as a topic of research, it has been relatively neglected in archaeological method and theory. We propose that a framework requires to be developed in which inferences can be made about the significance of sound in the past that are not bounded by the particularities of current cultural contexts. Such a framework should be multidisciplinary and draw on what is known scientif…
Analysing the relationship between tone and melody in Chaozhou songs
This paper uses corpus analysis to explore relationships between tone and melody in folk and contemporary songs in Chaozhou, a Chinese dialect with eight lexical tones and a wealth of tone sandhi. Results suggest that: (1) there is a high degree of correspondence between tone and melody in Chaozhou song; (2) tone sandhi influences tone-melody correspondence; (3) tones realised in context can be categorised into high-, mid-, and low-pitch groups a…
Music and Evolution
Music is definable in a broad sense as embodying, entraining and transposably intentionalising time in sound and action. Human infants, in infant–caregiver interaction, and in childhood patterns of thought and behaviour, appear universally to engage in activities that share those attributes, and musics can be construed as cultural particularisations of those infant/childhood interactive and individual behaviours. Music as defined in this way appe…
Music Analysis and Music Perception
Music and Social Being 1
Extract In this essay I shall make a number of claims about music. I shall claim that music, like language, is a fundamental part of the human communicative toolkit. It is unique and specific to humans, but music is not 'natural' while language is symbolic; music and language are both equally symbolic and natural domains of human thought and behaviour. I shall propose that music—musicality—underpins the intellectual and social flexibility display…
The Andean anacrusis? Rhythmic structure and perception in Easter songs of Northern Potosí, Bolivia
This paper is the result of a collaboration between an ethnomusicologist (Henry Stobart) and music psychologist (Ian Cross). It examines the interaction of a variety of processes underlying the rhythmic structure and perception of a song genre of the Bolivian Andes: these include linguistic prosody, movement patterns, perceptual constraints and the dynamics of the culture's musical aesthetics. The “Easter songs “ which form the focus of this stud…
Introduction
(1993). Introduction: Cognitive science and music—an overview. Contemporary Music Review: Vol. 9, Music and the Cognitive Sciences, pp. 1-6
Music Analysis and Music Perception
The Andean anacrusis? Rhythmic structure and perception in Easter songs of Northern Potosí, Bolivia
This paper is the result of a collaboration between an ethnomusicologist (Henry Stobart) and music psychologist (Ian Cross). It examines the interaction of a variety of processes underlying the rhythmic structure and perception of a song genre of the Bolivian Andes: these include linguistic prosody, movement patterns, perceptual constraints and the dynamics of the culture's musical aesthetics. The “Easter songs “ which form the focus of this stud…
Psychology of music
Music and Evolution
Music is definable in a broad sense as embodying, entraining and transposably intentionalising time in sound and action. Human infants, in infant–caregiver interaction, and in childhood patterns of thought and behaviour, appear universally to engage in activities that share those attributes, and musics can be construed as cultural particularisations of those infant/childhood interactive and individual behaviours. Music as defined in this way appe…
Music and Social Being 1
Extract In this essay I shall make a number of claims about music. I shall claim that music, like language, is a fundamental part of the human communicative toolkit. It is unique and specific to humans, but music is not 'natural' while language is symbolic; music and language are both equally symbolic and natural domains of human thought and behaviour. I shall propose that music—musicality—underpins the intellectual and social flexibility display…
A Software Interface between Human and Computer Virtual Players for Music Performance in Concert
The authors discuss the collaborative process of creating a computer interface to enable live musicians and computers to play together without compromising the integrity of the music or the performance
Musicality and the human capacity for culture
This paper proposes that the human capacity for musicality is integral to the human capacity for culture, and that the key feature of music that motivates its efficacy is its indeterminacy of meaning, or floating intentionality. It suggests that, from an evolutionary perspective, a focus on music's commonalities of function (rather than of structure) across cultures provides an appropriate framework for theorising the roles and the operational fe…
The evolutionary nature of musical meaning
The paper will draw on ethnomusicological, cognitive and neuroscientific evidence in suggesting that music and language constitute complementary components of the human communicative toolkit. It will start by outlining an operational definition of music as a mode of social interaction in terms of its generic, cross-cultural properties that facilitates comparison with language as a universal human faculty. It will argue that, despite the fact that…
Tonal implications of dyadic harmony
An experiment is presented in which the tonal attraction between context dyads and following probe tones was measured using listeners’ subjective ratings of ‘resolution’ and/or ‘pull’. The data were analysed with respect to three core variables identified within the stimuli: (1) interval cycles; (2) whether the context dyad was consonant or dissonant; and (3) the presence of possible tonic pitches. Only the interval cycle variable consistently an…
Listening as Covert Performance
This paper presents a view of musical listening as an active, dynamic and interactive process. After briefly considering the historical valorization of listening as critical act within Western musical culture, the paper describes the cognitive processes of schematization that are involved in musical listening. The central role of active engagement with the auditory environment in eliciting emotional responses to music is then sketched out, and th…
Incidental and online learning of melodic structure
Music and cognitive evolution
This article suggests that several different factors converged to suggest that evolutionary thinking about music was likely to be unfruitful. Over much of the twentieth century, consideration of origins in the study of music moved away from any exploration of music's relationship to biology to re-focus on the historical relationships between contemporary Western musical theory and practice, and Western musical history, or on music's relationships…
The Oxford handbook of human motivation
This handbook collects together human motivation's top theorists and researchers to provide overviews of today's most noteworthy theories, topical chapters on phenomena from ego-depletion to flow, recent work on the biological bases of motivation, and applied in chapters on therapy, work, sport, education and relationships.
Long-term musical group interaction has a positive influence on empathy in children
Musical group interaction (MGI) is a complex social setting requiring certain cognitive skills that may also elicit shared psychological states. We argue that many MGI-specific features may also be important for emotional empathy, the ability to experience another person’s emotional state. We thus hypothesized that long-term repeated participation in MGI could help enhance a capacity for emotional empathy even outside of the musical context, thro…
“Does not compute”? Music as real-time communicative interaction
Viral irony
There is iron in irony (Ewart, G. 1980. Selected Poems 1933–1988 . New Directions Books: New York, NY). Acentral concern of public affairs is the notion of social justice and the scrutinizing of truth claims in public discourse where the power of social actors is asymmetrical. The mechanisms of rejection of truth claims tend to fall into two camps: direct and indirect. The direct method is simply a public rebuff, whereas the indirect method is to…
Modelling unsupervised online-learning of artificial grammars
Artes, humanidades e as ciências
As ciências, por um lado, e as artes e humanidades, por outro, parecem comprometidas com maneiras diferentes de criar, compreender e usar o conhecimento. O papel da autoridade ou a validade do conhecimento nas ciências podem ser externalizados e generalizados através do processo de revisão por pares, ao passo que o conhecimento nas artes e humanidades é, muitas vezes, validado por meio da reputação, do apoio de especialistas e da influência diret…
Music and communication in music psychology
There is a general consensus that music is both universal and communicative, and musical dialogue is a key element in much music-therapeutic practice. However, the idea that music is a communicative medium has, to date, received little attention within the cognitive sciences, and the limited amount of research that addresses how and what music communicates has resulted in findings that appear to be of limited relevance to music therapy. This arti…
Music and Meaning
"[This edition] updates the original landmark text and provides a comprehensive review of the latest developments in this fast-growing area of research. Covering both experimental and theoretical perspectives, each of the 11 sections is edited by an internationally recognised authority in the area"--Jacket
The Acoustic and Auditory Contexts of Human Behavior
Sound is a crucial component of the human communicative toolkit; however, as a topic of research, it has been relatively neglected in archaeological method and theory. We propose that a framework requires to be developed in which inferences can be made about the significance of sound in the past that are not bounded by the particularities of current cultural contexts. Such a framework should be multidisciplinary and draw on what is known scientif…
Joint rhythmic tapping elicits distinct emotions depending on tap timing and prior musical training
Music plays a significant role in human life. It is a form of art and entertainment and a powerful medium for interpersonal interaction. The experience of listening to music is often emotional. Previous research has elucidated many of the mechanisms that effect an emotional response in the listener. In contrast, much less is known about how joint musical engagement impacts emotions. Here we focus on synchronized rhythmic interaction, a fundamenta…
Reopening the Conversation Between Music Psychology and Music Therapy
Although the fields of music psychology and music therapy share many common interests, research collaboration between the two fields is still somewhat rare. Previous work has identified that disciplinary identities and attitudes towards those in other disciplines are challenges to effective interdisciplinary research. The current study explores such attitudes in music therapy and music psychology. A sample of 123 music therapists and music psycho…
Perception of rhythmic agency for conversational labeling
There are well-understood benefits of designing intelligent interactive systems to support mixed-initiative interaction, in which there is a back-and-forth dynamic between user and system. We explore the effects of introducing rhythmic elements into this interaction, building on the phenomenon of conversational entrainment in human-to-human conversation. We demonstrate that well-chosen rhythms reduce user stress, increase confidence, and improve …
Psychology (26 works) · Neuroscience and Music Perception (21 works) · Computer Science (16 works) · Art (14 works) · Linguistics (13 works) · Musical (12 works) · Cognitive psychology (11 works) · Communication (11 works) · Aesthetics (10 works) · Cognitive science (10 works)