Aleksandar Aksentijevic | Roehampton University (original) (raw)

Papers by Aleksandar Aksentijevic

The current study investigated the effects of melodic structure on the mental rotation of binary ... more The current study investigated the effects of melodic structure on the mental rotation of binary visual sequences. Each trial consisted of a five-segment visual sequence (standard) followed by a five tone melody which was either identical to the standard or its retrograde. A target pattern was either the mirror version of the standard or unrelated to it. The task was to indicate whether the target pattern was the mirror version of the standard or not. Relative orientation of the interposed auditory patterns had an effect on the rotational latency of the visual patterns. Presentation of standard-matching auditory patterns improve latency performance for the simple patterns while the auditory patterns which matched the mirror version of the standard patterns improved latency performance of the complex patterns. Results suggested that mental rotation was performed in a piecemeal manner and that the level of complexity, which was associated with the length of region of change and the re...

Frontiers in Neuroscience, 2014

Previous research examining the psychophysical mechanisms concerned with combining tonal signals ... more Previous research examining the psychophysical mechanisms concerned with combining tonal signals into auditory Gestalten has revealed a rate (33 Hz) and time-specific reaction-time (RT) enhancement (i.e., latency shortening) for inharmonic tones 1 . The aim of the present study was twofold; firstly to investigate an enhancement effect that is dependent on a temporal relationship defined by the frequency of the oscillatory response, to see if it is confined to oscillations of 33 Hz, and secondly to investigate the presence of a protentive effect (i.e. seeking evidence for an advanced response) that may be revealed by an interaction of frequency and presentation time. Participants responded as rapidly and accurately as possible to the presence or absence of a target tone in the second of a sequence of two sounds (N = 13). The parameters of these stimuli were designed to be proportionately equivalent to the 33 Hz stimuli in the paradigm which produced the previous RT enhancement.

In music, inverse and retrograde transformations of melody have long been used as a popular compo... more In music, inverse and retrograde transformations of melody have long been used as a popular compositional device (e.g. serialism). When explicitly instructed listeners can recognise such transformations of short melodies 1 and evidence suggests they are processed implicitly 2 . The ability to perceive relations between transformations of melodic structure draws comparison with perceptual features of object recognition in the visual domain 3 . The present experiment sought to examine more closely the cognitive processes involved in the perception of transformed melodic structure.

Psychology of Music, 2008

Psychology of Music Psychology of Music Copyright © 2008 Society for Education, Music and Psychol... more Psychology of Music Psychology of Music Copyright © 2008 Society for Education, Music and Psychology Research vol 36(3): 389–390 [0305-7356 (200807) 36:3; 389–390] 10.1177/0305735608095003 http://pom.sagepub.com ... Trygve Aasgaard Mayumi Adachi Aleksandar Aksentijevic Eckart Altenmuller Michael Apter Richard Ashley James Austin Freya Bailes Jeanne Bamberger Margaret Barrett Nancy Barry Emmanuel Bigand Warren Brodsky Karen Burland Pam Burnard Rosie Burt Charles Byrne George Caldwell Patricia Campbell Gianna Cassidy Roger Chaffin Tomas ...

Psychology of Music, 2012

Aspects of the 'zygonic' model of expectation in music were tested experimentally. Forty subjects... more Aspects of the 'zygonic' model of expectation in music were tested experimentally. Forty subjects were played a diatonic melody, starting with the initial note only, then the first two notes, and so on. Each time, subjects were asked to sing what they considered to be the most likely continuation. The results were compared with the outputs of three algorithms derived from the zygonic model, which took into account adjacency ('Z1'), adjacency and recency ('Z2'), and adjacency, recency, and between-group projections ('Z3'). Each algorithm modelled the perceptual responses with statistically distinct degrees of accuracy; Z3 was the most faithful to subjects' expectations. Given the empirical data, potential refinements to the quantification of the zygonic model were considered. Additionally, it was found that men and women exhibited different patterns of expectation in relation to the stimuli that were presented, paralleling recent neuropsychological data suggesting that the location of music-structural processing in the brain may differ by gender.

Notwithstanding the popularity of psychology courses throughout the world, educators face a const... more Notwithstanding the popularity of psychology courses throughout the world, educators face a constant and difficult problem of overcoming the fear of and dislike for statistics
which represents one of the pillars of modern psychological science. Although the issue is complex and multifaceted, here I argue that “statophobia” might represent a rational and justified response to the sense of unease felt in contact with abstract statistical concepts which are often vague, circular or ill-defined. I illustrate the problem by briefly discussing two myths about the nature of probability and statistics, namely that probability and statistics generate knowledge and that the fault for not understanding probability lies solely with the subjective cognition which is incapable of comprehending deeper mathematical truth. I argue that the confident presentation of statistical methods hides numerous conceptual blind spots that students might be aware of and that need to be
addressed before other causes of statistics anxiety can be tackled successfully.

Although widely investigated and used in psychology, the concept of randomness is beset with phil... more Although widely investigated and used in psychology, the concept of randomness is beset with philosophical and practical difficulties. In this paper, I propose a resolution to a long-standing problem in psychological research by arguing that the inability to comprehend and produce random behavior is not caused by a defect on the part of the observer but is a consequence of conceptual confusion. Randomness describes a state of high complexity which defies analysis and understanding. The well-known biases in predictive behavior (e.g. hot-hand and gambler’s fallacy) are not caused by the observers’ inability to comprehend randomness but reflect a natural pattern-seeking response to high-complexity situations.
Further, I address the circularity at the heart of the randomness debate. Replacing randomness with complexity in psychology and cognitive science would eliminate many of the current problems associated with defining, investigating and using this elusive term.

A perceptual phenomenon called apparent motion has been described as a paradox that challenges th... more A perceptual phenomenon called apparent motion has been described as a paradox that challenges the notions of causality and temporal order. While the illusion has generated a passionate and often highly technical debate about the relationship between subjective experience and its objective description, no accounts so far have examined the possibility that the source of the paradox lies not in the mysterious workings of the brain but in the inadequacy of the reductionist explanation. Here, I suggest that the paradox is created by the deep estrangement between subjective and objective perspectives which has created two separate and conflicted worldviews. The illusion itself reflects a veridical perceptual experience, while its analytical explanation fails because it lacks the very qualities it is trying to account for. Although the proposed solution is controversial, it offers a simple and potentially far-reaching explanation for a long-standing problem in psychology and consciousness research.

RECENT EVIDENCE INDICATES THAT SYNCHRONIZED brain oscillations in the low gamma range (*33 Hz) ar... more RECENT EVIDENCE INDICATES THAT SYNCHRONIZED brain oscillations in the low gamma range (*33 Hz) are involved in the perceptual integration of harmonic complex tones. At this rate, reaction times (RTs) are faster to targets that are not harmonically related to the prime. In the current study, we investigated the presence of this rate-specific inharmonic pop-out in groups of musicians and nonmusicians. We found that rather than increasing the salience of inharmonic targets, 33-pps priming reduced the salience of harmonic targets. This effect was observed in nonmusicians only, suggesting that music training reduces the role of oscillatory coding mechanisms in the perceptual integration of harmonic information.

Traditionally, theories of complexity used in psychology have been based on geometric, probabilis... more Traditionally, theories of complexity used in psychology have been based on geometric,
probabilistic, and algorithmic paradigms. While these have been useful in highlighting the
importance of complexity for psychology, they have not, in general, addressed the relationship
between complexity and processing cost. In this paper, we review some of the classic and current
complexity theories in psychology and suggest that psychological complexity and processing cost
can be quantified using the notion of hierarchical change. Finally, we discuss the relationship
between change, complexity, and the Gestalt principles of perceptual organization.

Evidence suggests that synchronized brain oscillations in the low gamma range (around 33 Hz) are ... more Evidence suggests that synchronized brain oscillations in the low gamma range (around 33 Hz) are involved in the perceptual integration of harmonic complex tones. This process involves the binding of harmonic components into “harmonic templates” – neural structures responsible for pitch coding in the brain. We investigated the hypothesis that
oscillatory harmonic binding promotes a change in pitch perception style from spectral (frequency) to virtual (relational). Using oscillatory priming we asked 24 participants to judge
as rapidly as possible, the direction of an ambiguous target with ascending spectral and descending virtual contour. They made significantly more virtual responses when primed at 29, 31, and 33 Hz and when the first target tone was harmonically related to the prime, suggesting that neural synchronization in the low gamma range could facilitate a shift toward virtual pitch processing.

This article is a commentary on 'Examining the association between music lessons and intelligence... more This article is a commentary on 'Examining the association between music lessons and intelligence' The association between musical experience and cognition is relatively well established, and this relationship is of great interest not only in music psychology research, but also to parents, educators, and policy makers. Music is also being used ever more widely as a relatively inexpensive and potentially effective therapeutic and clinical tool. Nevertheless, as Schellenberg (2011) points out in this provocative and well-argued paper, the relationship between music and cognition is highly complex. We will focus on two main issues of concern: the first is the direction of the causal relationships proposed, which leads on to the related questions of how the characteristics of the sample in this study may have influenced its correlational results, and the status of the construct of executive function (EF). The second main issue is the putative uniqueness of musical intervention.

Performance in a visual mental rotation (MR) task has been reported to predict the ability to rec... more Performance in a visual mental rotation (MR) task has been reported to predict the
ability to recognize retrograde-transformed melodies. The current study investigated
the effects of melodic structure on the MR of sequentially presented visual patterns.
Each trial consisted of a five-segment sequentially presented visual pattern (standard)
followed by a five-tone melody that was either identical in structure to the standard or
its retrograde. A visual target pattern was either the rotated version of the standard or
unrelated to it. The task was to indicate whether the target pattern was a rotated version
of the standard or not. Periodic patterns were not rotated but melodies facilitated
the rotation of non-periodic patterns. For these, rotation latency was determined by
a quantitative index of complexity (number of runs). This study provides the first
experimental confirmation for cross-modal facilitation of MR.

In vision, the Gestalt principles of perceptual organization are generally well understood and re... more In vision, the Gestalt principles of perceptual organization are generally well understood and remain a subject of detailed analysis. However, the possibility for a unified theory of grouping across visual and auditory modalities remains largely unexplored. Here we present examples of auditory and visual Gestalt grouping, which share important organizational properties. In particular, similarities are revealed between grouping processes in apparent motion, auditory streaming, and static 2-D displays. Given the substantial difference in the context, within which the phenomena in question occur (auditory vs. visual, static vs. dynamic), these similarities suggest that the dynamics of perceptual organization could be associated with a common (possibly central) mechanism. If the relevance of supramodal invariants of grouping is granted, the question arises as to whether they can be studied empirically. We propose that a force-field theory, based on a differential-geometric interpretation of perceptual space could provide a suitable starting point for a systematic exploration of the subjective properties of certain classes of auditory and visual grouping phenomena.

Journal of Experimental Psychology-human Perception and Performance, 2011

Advances in auditory research suggest that gamma-band synchronization of frequency-specific corti... more Advances in auditory research suggest that gamma-band synchronization of frequency-specific cortical loci could be responsible for the integration of pure tones (harmonics) into harmonic complex tones. Thus far, evidence for such a mechanism has been revealed in neurophysiological studies, with little corroborative psychophysical evidence. In six experiments, we observed a rate-and time-specific response-time advantage for a sequence of target pips when the defining frequency of the target was a fractional multiple of a priming frequency. The effect was only observed when the prime and target sequences were presented at 33 pips per second and when the interstimulus interval was approximately 100 and 250 ms. This evidence implicates oscillatory gamma-band activity in the representation of harmonic complex tones and suggests that synchronization with precise temporal characteristics is important for disambiguating related harmonic templates. An outline of a model is presented, which accounts for these findings in terms of fast resynchronization of relevant neuronal assemblies.

Cognitive Systems Research

Traditionally, models of complexity used in psychology have been based on probabilistic and algor... more Traditionally, models of complexity used in psychology have been based on probabilistic and algorithmic paradigms. While these models have inspired a great deal of research, they are generally opaque about the relationship between complexity and the cost of information processing. We argue that the psychological complexity is easily defined and quantified in terms of change and support this argument with a measure of complexity for binary patterns. We extend our measure to 2-D binary arrays, and show that it correlates well with a number of existing complexity and randomness measures, both subjective and objective. We suggest that measuring change represents an intuitively and mathematically transparent way of defining and quantifying psychological complexity which provides the missing link between subjective and objective approaches to complexity.

Frontiers in Neuroscience, 2014

Psychology of Music, 2008

Psychology of Music, 2012

Journal of Experimental Psychology-human Perception and Performance, 2011

Cognitive Systems Research