Temporal codes and neural temporal processing architectures (neural timing nets) that potentially subserve perception of pitch and rhythm are discussed. We address 1) properties of neural interspike interval representations that may underlie basic aspects of musical tonality (e.g., octave similarities), 2) implementation of pattern-similarity comparisons between interval representations using feedforward timing nets, and 3) representation of rhythmic patterns in recurrent timing nets. Computer simulated interval-patterns produced by harmonic complex tones whose fundamentals are related through simple ratios showed higher correlations than for more complex ratios. Similarities between interval-patterns produced by notes and chords resemble similarity-judgements made by human listeners in probe tone studies. Feedforward timing nets extract common temporal patterns from their inputs, so as to extract common pitch irrespective of timbre and vice versa. Recurrent timing nets build up complex temporal expectations over time through repetition, providing a means of representing rhythmic patterns. They constitute alternatives to oscillators and clocks, with which they share many common functional properties.

While constructivist theory is widely promoted in pre-service music teacher education, there has been a lack of research conducted to reveal the ways in which the theory is individually personalized, then subsumed, translated and adopted into in-service classroom teaching practice. To address this shortfall, this article explores some of the ways that music teachers individually apply their understanding of the philosophically generated ideas and the cognitive concepts and principles that are broadly regarded as “constructivist.” In seeking to contribute to professional dialogue and debate surrounding this matter, this study seeks to illuminate how a small sample of music teachers engages both theoretically and practically with constructivist views of learning. Using a qualitative approach, the researchers incorporated staged, informal interviews with invited teacher participants. Preliminary analyses of interview data were returned to the participants for review and further commentary. This process was designed to contribute to both the trustworthiness of representation and to enhance the transactional process between participants and researchers. The commentaries are designed to problematize issues, raise points for discussion and the article concludes with implications for practice in schools and universities.

Key words: constructivism, music education, music pedagogy, pre-service music teaching.

Heroic images are presented here as constructed possible selves which may play an important role in self development. A questionnaire was given to 510 Irish and 190 U.S. third and fourth grade children in a study designed to investigate (1) their conceptions of the heroic and (2) the effects of a classroom intervention on the Irish children’s choices of heroes and heroines. The educational program was constructivist and designed to challenge children to reconsider their ideas about heroic figures and to engage in discussion designed to promote prosocial attitudes in concrete ways. While national origin and gender strongly influenced children’s heroic images, there were strong factor structure similarities in U.S. and Irish samples. “The good” was the first factor, the fifth an antiheroic factor, and the others reflected figures from film, television and sport. In addition, gender differences in the choice of proximal and distal heroic figures were identified. Prosocial effects due to the intervention program were encouraging and discussed within the context of Irish educational objectives. Relevance: Heroes play an important role in identity. This study shows both national differences between Irish and US primary/elementary age children, and also shows how a classroom intervention can influence heroic figures chosen.

Key words: Heroes, school age sample, heroic domains, youth culture, identity, classroom intervention

Children’s self concepts are important constructions of their experience in childhood. Following Ernst von Glasersfeld’s approach, self concepts are personal organisations of self-other experiences. Heroes as admired figures have a role in self-concepts and play collectivist or individualist roles in the child’s imagination and self-development. Further, they reflect what the child has chosen as important. Representations of heroic figures in questionnaires given to French (n = 241) and Spanish (n = 227) samples of 10 and 15-year-olds were examined to assess the extent that heroes originated in digital media, and whether they were proximal or distal personalities. There is strong evidence that heroes in this sample were largely learned about in digital media (France 45%, Spain 50%): family and community heroes were a minority (France11%, Spain 9%). Male heroes were more important to Spanish participants compared to their French peers. The acquisition sequence for hero type reported in the pre-television era, proximal (family and community) to distal (beyond the neighbourhood), is reversed in this study. Generally, 10-year-olds preferred heroes with collectivist qualities and 15 year olds with individualised qualities. Findings are discussed in terms of the emergence of social capital. Relevance: This survey shows cultural differences in the choices of Spanish and French 10 and 15 year olds.

Key words: Hero, gender, French, Spanish, children

In this paper I point to aspects of Heinz von Foerster’s work that might be considered, normally, under the heading of art, a heading rarely used to describe this work. Starting by referring to a paper ‘Heinz von Foerster: the Form and the Content’ (Glanville, 1996b) – that I wrote for Foerster’s 85th birthday festschrift (Glanville, 1996a), I introduce several art type concerns that can be found in Foerster’s work, then move on to consider the culture in which Foerster grew up. Using, as a metaphor, the argument that Janik and Toulmin (1973) make in the case of Ludwig Wittgenstein, in their study of Wittgenstein’s Vienna, I proposal that there is a similar study to be carried out in Foerster’s case, if we are to better understand Foerster’s legacy.

Research in phenomenology has benefitted from using exceptional cases from pathology and expertise. But exactly how are we to generate and apply knowledge from such cases to the phenomenological domain? As researchers of cerebral palsy and musical absorption, we together answer the how question by pointing to the resource of the qualitative interview. Using the qualitative interview is a direct response to Varela’s call for better pragmatics in the methodology of phenomenology and cognitive science and Gallagher’s suggestion for phenomenology to develop its methodology and outsource its tasks. We agree with their proposals, but want to develop them further by discussing and proposing a general framework that can integrate research paradigms of the well-established disciplines of phenomenological philosophy and qualitative science. We give this the working title, a “phenomenological interview”. First we describe the what of the interview, that is the nature of the interview in which one encounters another subject and generates knowledge of a given experience together with this other subject. In the second part, we qualify why it is worthwhile making the time-consuming effort to engage in a phenomenological interview. In the third and fourth parts, we in general terms discuss how to conduct the interview and the subsequent phenomenological analysis, by discussing the pragmatics of Vermersch’s and Petitmengin’s “Explicitation Interview”.

Key words: phenomenology, qualitative interview, co-generated knowledge, reciprocal interaction, factual (eidetic) variation, explicitation interview.

Excerpt: The way we conceptualize our musical experience is anything but arbitrary and ungrounded. Our musical concepts and the language we use to communicate them is not different in kind from our other concepts. We think and talk about music in the ways we do precisely because of the embodied ways we experience music. Music theories, consequently, will make use of these metaphors grounded in embodied experience

I consider the relation between shared musical experience and basic forms of empathy. I draw upon studies from developmental psychology to show that music motivates early infant-caregiver interactions and supports rudimentary forms of interpersonal understanding. I stress the enactive character of this process and argue that shared musical experiences depend crucially on sensorimotor features of the animate body. To highlight their enactive character, I characterize such experiences as dynamic processes of (1) joint sensemaking, enacted via temporally-extended patterns of (2) skillful engagement with music that are (3) synchronically and diachronically scaffolded by the surrounding environment. I treat these three aspects in turn, arguing that they collectively afford the unique sort of intimacy – empathy – possible even within early shared listening experiences.

Key words: empathy, intersubjectivity, phenomenology, emotions, enaction, developmental psychology, entrainment, music therapy

I offer a preliminary defense of the hypothesis of extended emotions (HEE). After discussing some taxonomic considerations, I specify two ways of parsing HEE: the hypothesis of bodily extended emotions (HEBE), and the hypothesis of environmentally extended emotions (HEEE). I argue that, while both HEBE and HEEE are empirically plausible, only HEEE covers instances of genuinely extended emotions. After introducing some further distinctions, I support one form of HEEE by appealing to different streams of empirical research—particularly work on music and emotion regulation. However, I register skepticism about a second and more radical form of HEEE.

Key words: Emotions. Affect. Extended mind. Music.. Self-regulation. Joint listening

I argue for an enactive account of musical experience – that is, the experience of listening ‘deeply’ (i.e., sensitively and understandingly) to a piece of music. The guiding question is: what do we do when we listen ‘deeply’ to music? I argue that these music listening episodes are, in fact, doings. They are instances of active perceiving, robust sensorimotor engagements with and manipulations of sonic structures within musical pieces. Music is thus experiential art, and in Nietzsche’s words, ‘we listen to music with our muscles’. This paper attempts to explicate and defend this claim. First, I discuss enactive approaches to consciousness and cognition generally. Next, I apply an enactive model of perceptual consciousness to the experience of listening to music. To clarify what is at stake, I use Peter Kivy’s ‘enhanced formalism’ as a philosophical foil. I then look at how the animate body shapes musical experience.