Show threadKate2d ago

Very preliminary data analysis seems to be showing that people, regardless of musical training, are able to count up to 3 pretty well, and accuracy drops considerably for 4 and even more for 5, and it drops a bit less for people with musical training than those without.

#VoiceDenumerability

Show threadKate2d ago

This experiment is looking at how many instruments people can count when they are playing together—for example, if listening to a recording of a string quartet, how well can people tell if it is 1, 2, 3, or 4 instruments playing at any given moment, and how readily can they identify when the number changes (one or more start or stop). My musical examples go up to 5 instruments (or musical “voices”). The hypothesis is that trained musicians would be able to identify 1-3 quite well, and then that accuracy and ability to identify changes would go down fairly rapidly with textures of more than 3 voices, and that people without musical training would perform less well than those with musical training.

#VoiceDenumerability

Kate2d ago

I have collected data from 60 participants over the last two days, and the preliminary data analysis looks really good. Overall, participants are performing as hypothesized or better. I suspected that the study I am basing this study on underestimated the ability of people without musical training to do this task (or a similar one), and it appears that I was right! They’re doing even better than I expected.

#VoiceDenumerability

Show threadKate4d ago

Data collection is underway.

Mild panic also underway.

#VoiceDenumerability

Kate4d ago

I haven’t talked about my thesis here for a while, and I guess the posts that I used the #VoiceDenumerability tag with got deleted (I must not have favourited them to stop them autodeleting), but I think today might be the day that I finally start collecting data.

I’ve been spending a lot of time these past few months learning how to analyse data in R studio, so hopefully I’m ready enough now to process my data when I get it.

I am excited and nervous.