14 DAY TRIAL // People are, consciously or unconsciously, influenced a great deal by the music they listen to, be it happy, sad, jumpy, depressive, or mellow. Their response is almost immediate, and researchers have been curious to know exactly where this habit originated from for a long time. However, investigating this proved to be extremely difficult. Studies always hit a dead end, as primates, the obvious subjects for such investigations, seemed to prefer silence to human music. A new scientific effort has revealed that they, however, respond to monkey music accordingly.
In a series of experiments, University of Wisconsin-Madison (UWM) Professor of Psychology Charles Snowdon, and musician David Teie, from the University of Maryland (UM), discovered that cotton-top tamarins responded very well to “music” made especially for them, by combining a number of call signals that the monkeys used in the wild. When human music was played in the cages, the “subjects” were unaffected, but their attention was solicited when the monkey sounds were played.
Teie composed a number of 30-second clips especially for this research, using a diversified array of signals that had previously been recorded in the jungle. Two major emotions were conveyed via the songs, either fear and/or threat, or inclusion, happiness and affiliation. The tamarins proved to be extremely receptive to the difference between the two genres, and the scientists report that the monkeys showed signs associable with the two states of mind minutes after the tracks were played.
The full details of the new experiments appear in the September 1st issue of the respected scientific journal Biology Letters. The tamarins that heard the fear-instilling music showed signs of anxiety for up to five minutes after listening to the sounds. By comparison, primates that were played the calming, happy music increased their feeding behavior, and stood still for a longer time, the team reports.
“We use legato (long tones) with babies to calm them. We use staccato to order them to stop. Approval has a rising tone, and soothing has a decreasing tone. We add musical features to speech so it will influence the affective state of a baby. If you bark out, 'PLAY WITH IT,' a baby will freeze. The voice, the intonation pattern, the musicality can matter more than the words. My talking does not necessarily tell you about my emotional state. When I add extra elements, change the tone of voice, the rhythm, pitch or speed, that is where the emotional content is contained,” Snowdon explains.
“I am not calling just to let you know how I am feeling, but my call can also stimulate a similar state in you. That would be valuable if a group was threatened; in that situation, you don't want everybody being calm, you want them alert. We do the same thing when we try to calm a baby. I am not just communicating about how I am feeling. I am using the way I communicate to induce a similar state in the baby,” the expert concludes.
