Investigating the influence of contextual information on cardiac activity in response to musical performance

Talk presented at Society for Music Perception & Cognition (SMPC), Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, Alberta, Canada 25–27 July 2024 School/Affiliation: McMaster University Co-Authors: Joshua Schlichting, Shreshth Saxena, Lauren Fink

Abstract Link to heading

Previous research investigating emotional responses to music through physiological measures, such as heart rate, are often performed in controlled laboratory conditions using short musical stimuli. However, typical musical experiences often occur in social contexts and over longer timescales, which presumably allow for deeper immersion and emotional engagement. The present study aimed to bridge the gap between laboratory and real-world situations by analyzing cardiac activity of individuals attending a documentary film screening and social advocacy themed musical performance. Both media were shown on two days (2/4 April 2024) in McMaster’s LIVELab. Sixty participants attended either the film-then-performance (n = 29) or the performance-then-film (n = 31). Bangle.js 2 smart watches recorded participants’ photoplethysmogram (PPG), which were used to calculate cardiac indices (e.g., heart rate, heart rate variability, etc.) to gauge relative emotional arousal to the film and performance over time. Additionally, we used a fine-grained time-series analysis technique called the matrix profile to identify motifs (similar response patterns) and discords (dissimilar response patterns) in cardiac activity. We primarily aimed to address: 1) whether cardiac activity changed consistently across participants over the span of the performance; and 2) whether patterns of cardiac activity differed depending on the contextual information provided by the film. The strength and consistency of effects across participants were hypothesized to depend on the order of film and performance. Our ongoing analyses consider two contrasting predictions: the film could provide a prior context that 1) increases similarity in participants’ responses during the performance; or 2) diminishes the performance’s impact and weakens corresponding responses. By situating our study in a live-concert setting, using non-invasive recording techniques, and applying state of the art analyses, our results offer a nuanced and ecological perspective on the emotional processes of music listeners.