The communication of emotion in music proceeds from composers and performers, who encode emotions, to listeners, who decode the intended emotion. The process occurs because composers and performers use changes in various acoustic attributes, such as intensity, tempo, and pitch to express emotion. Listeners share in the understanding of the emotional connotations implied by changes in the acoustic attributes made by musicians. In a series of experiments, I examined the relative contributions of composers and performers to communicating emotion in music. I recorded musicians expressing a range of emotions using only performance, only composition or the combination. Listeners’ evaluated these stimuli using forced-choice judgements and ratings of affective dimensions. I then performed acoustic analyses to determine the specific cues musicians used to convey emotional intentions to listeners and the specific cues that predicted listeners’ evaluations of emotion. In subsequent experiments, I also examined the extent to which listeners are consciously aware of these acoustic attributes I asked participants with and without music training to explicitly select musical attributes to communicate specific emotions. Musically untrained participants demonstrated that they are sensitive and have a rich knowledge of emotional signals in music.

Video games are at the center of a debate over what is helpful or harmful to children and adolescents, and there is research to substantiate both sides. The existing research suggests that there are at least five dimensions on which video games can affect players: the amount of play, the content of play, the game context, the structure of the game, and the mechanics of game play. This talk describes each of these five dimensions with examples, arguing that this approach can allow people to get beyond the typical “good/bad” dichotomous thinking to have a more nuanced understanding of video game effects.

Tobacco smoking is often referred to as being a habit that takes much difficulty in breaking, however surprisingly little research has addressed this question. Using the rat self-administration paradigm, we can model how nicotine addiction develops and determine whether behavioural characteristics such as habits may be important in the persistence of smoking behaviour. My current research program is addressing the best parameters to use to model this behaviour in rats, followed by characterisation of the presence or absence of habits in rats that have received either brief or chronic nicotine exposure. Future research will be focused on discovering the brain processes underlying these changes in behaviour and determination of novel pharmacological and behavioural therapies that might target breaking the smoking habit.