Categorization and image schemes in music: About an experimental protocol

Abstract

The abstract nature of music raises questions about how listeners perceive the musical flow. Only through research that seeks to understand the mechanisms and tools the human mind uses to grasp the musical flow, giving it meaning, can we understand how we abstract and understand music. This article aims to discuss the validity conditions of an experimental protocol that seeks to investigate the cognitive devices for understanding the musical flow based on the observation of listening and analysis of short musical excerpts by musician listeners. Starting from the enactment theory that at the basis of the cognitive process of categorization are schematic memories (image schemes), understood as archetypes of human understanding, the protocol examined here aims to access the immediate experience of producing musical meanings, trying, as much as possible, approach the preconscious stage of understanding. In this sense, the hypothesis investigated here is that the participants' linguistic descriptions of the musical flow experienced may reveal clues of emphasis in using specific image schemes in constructing the meaning of the musical flow. After analyzing the results obtained in the pilot experiment, questions arose: to what extent is the time lapse between contact with the questionnaire question and its answer decisive for its consistency? To what extent is the order of presentation of listening tasks decisive for the neutrality of participants' responses?