Affective and coherence responses to Russian laments

We investigated the effects of formal characteristics (musical phrase struc ture) and nonverbal vocal gestures (gasps characteristic of crying) on affe ctive and coherence responses to Russian laments by listeners who were fami liar or unfamiliar with Russian village music. Laments were presented in se mantically compatible or incompatible phrase orders with gasps present or a bsent. Listeners rated laments on an affective response scale (sad/happy) a nd a musical coherence scale (phrases follow well phrases follow poorly). A ll listeners judged laments as sadder when gasps were present than absent, but effects of phrase order on affective responses were dependent on listen ers' musical background. Listeners familiar with Russian laments judged all excerpts as coherent, but listeners unfamiliar with laments judged the exc erpts as less coherent when gasps were present than absent. Listeners' emot ional and cognitive responses to music were affected by both culture-transc endent factors (gasps characteristic of crying) and culture-specific factor s (phrase structure).