The Sound of Manufactured Music: Reviewing the Role of Artificial Stimuli in Music Cognition Research.

Having participants listen and react to musical stimuli is one of music cognition's foundational methods. Whereas most researchers have used stimuli adapted from existing musical traditions in such work, others have incorporated artificial stimuli (i.e., stimuli generated specifically for research that are not borrowed from any existing musical system) into their research designs. No review of this growing literature on artificial stimuli exists, leaving open the question of how useful they are in helping formulate and test research questions in music cognition. To this end, a systematic narrative review of empirical studies utilizing artificial musical stimuli (N = 52) was conducted. Comparing these studies to analogous works involving conventional stimuli in the areas of music preference, music learning, and musical emotion revealed the power of artificial stimuli in reducing concerns regarding stimulus familiarity and musical enculturation confounds, as well as in refining theory by reiterating the need for the development of composite predictive models in music cognition. This review also suggests that using artificial stimuli has the potential to help clarify the neurological and sociocognitive factors surrounding music listening behavior. Furthermore, because artificial stimuli are not tied to any existing sociocultural musical system, they may also lead to more generalizable findings. This enhanced generalizability may also coincide with expanded inclusivity, toward which the field of music cognition (and psychology more generally) are increasingly striving. Other potential uses, benefits, and limitations of artificial musical stimuli are discussed, as well as recommendations for researchers seeking to utilize such stimuli in future studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]