I chose this text by David Huron for my book review. Sweet Anticipation is an empirically informed and statistically based work detailing Huron’s psychological theory of expectation. This book is a 462-page analysis of the phenomenon of musical expectation, which Huron grounds in psychological, biological, and evolutionary roots. It is a natural progression built on his experimental efforts to understand how music evokes emotions. Huron breaks his work down into 17 chapters. He provides an abundance of footnotes (28 pages), a 14-page glossary, 25 pages of references, and a 13-page index and he links the notated music examples of this book to his website. Huron defines anticipation as, “the subjective experience accompanying a strong expectation that a particular event will occur; also referred to as the feeling of anticipation” and “ in Western music theory, a type of melodic embellishment in which an expected note is immediately preceded by the same pitch.” He relates this to premonition. This book is targeted for readers interested in cognitive science and evolutionary psychology, as well as in music.
Huron calls his general theory of expectation the ITPRA theory. ITPRA stands for his five categories of expectation responses: imagination, tension, prediction, reaction and appraisal. Huron posits that implicit, statistical expectations about music are directly linked to emotional response to music because they trigger basic neurobiological responses. Huron grounds his ITPRA theory in evolutionary, musicological, biological, and psychological theories.
In ITPRA, Huron suggests that an individual’s expectations about music tap into the same neural substrates as anticipation in general. Huron posits that emotions evoked by expectation involve five functionally distinct response systems: reaction responses (which engage defensive reflexes); tension responses (where uncertainty leads to stress); prediction responses (which reward accurate prediction); imagination responses (which facilitate deferred gratification); and appraisal responses (which occur after conscious thought is engaged).
According to Huron, these five response systems typically produce a complex mixture of feelings in real-world events and they contribute to the human emotional response to music. Pre-outcome responses (feelings that occur prior to an expected / unexpected event) relate to the anticipation of an event, they are comprised of imagination and tension responses. Imagining future events has emotional and intellectual aspects; the emotional aspect is designed to spur us to action. The imagination response contemplates potential future states and acts in ways that make those states more likely if they are positive, and less likely if they are negative. Imagining an outcome is a principal motivator of behavior. Without the imagination process, individuals would fail to take steps to avoid negative outcomes. Evidence suggests that imagination response induces actual emotional states while retaining awareness that the event that would lead to that state has not actually occurred.
The uncertainty of future events/experiences is an important element of anticipation, as are the knowledge of likely outcomes and their valence. Feeling uncertain about the immediate future causes Tension, which galvanizes flight, fight, or freeze - survival responses in anticipation of future events. The tension response is a more immediate physiological preparation for an imminent event and involves changes in arousal. The tension response is activated immediately before an anticipated moment of outcome, and adjusts the level of arousal and attention according to the degree of uncertainty surrounding the outcome, the significance of potential outcomes, and the estimated time before the outcome occurs.
Prediction, Reaction, and Appraisal are post-outcome responses - the three expectation processes. They are related to the outcome of events. Huron believes that chemicals in the brain are released that positively reinforce correct predictions about events and negatively reinforce incorrect predictions. He offers two separate systems of appraising events – an immediate emotional reaction process that automatically assumes the worst possible outcome based on schematic knowledge, and a slower, but more accurate cognitive process that appraises the valance and the importance of events. Working in tandem with the earlier immediate reaction process, cognitive appraisal dilutes the earlier emotional response if the evidence that earlier response was inappropriate. Cognitive appraisal of an experienced event may help avoid the possibility of being subjected to similar detrimental events in the future. Prediction responses are transient states of reward or punishment that arise in response to the accuracy of expectation. Accurate expectations are rewarded by positively-valence emotional responses, and inaccurate expectations are punished by negatively-valenced emotional responses.
Both the reaction and appraisal responses are emotional states that arise from assessments of the event itself independent of whether that event was anticipated. The reaction response is a rapid process that occurs automatically and preattentively and activates bodily actions and / or visceral responses. Reaction responses are knee-jerk reactions but are not always instinctive reflexes; they can also be learned. Appraisal responses are more considered and conscious assessments of an outcome, and need not be compatible with the reaction response.
The five processes of ITPRA prepare biologically adaptive behavioral responses that allow organisms to be optimally prepared for dangerous occurrences in the environment. Huron theorizes that musical expectations appropriate these five biologically adaptive processes, thereby producing a complex mix of feelings. He traces the psychology of expectations from the patterns of the physical/cultural world through imperfectly learned heuristics used to predict that world to the phenomenal qualia we experienced as we apprehend the world.
I found Huron’s proposals for expectancy mechanisms and their possible evolutionary origin in harmony with my own thoughts on the subject. This added to my interest in, and enjoyment of, this work. I cannot imagine it making the New York Times Bestseller List like Levitin’s This is Your Brain on Music. The nonmusician chapters were not difficult to read, but required a certain dedication and level of attentiveness to follow his thinking. His glossary and website were very important to the quality of my understanding of the musical and cognitive components of this work. I found similarities between Huron and Davies’ writing style. They both give numerous examples to illustrate their thought processes, they both restate their important points, and they both practice summarizing as a writing technique. But I believe their books were written for different audiences. Huron’s book is more technical, more evidentiary based, and supplies more empirically standardized charts, graphs, and musical notation than Davies. I would consider his overabundance of footnotes as the biggest detraction to reading this book. While they are wonderful for research purposes, they were an interruption to the flow of my reading experience, especially when I found only a citation to the reference.
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