Perception of Musical Cooperation in Jazz Duets Is Predicted by Social Aptitude

Skilled jazz musicians are adept at coordinating their musical actions to produce an auditory outcome that is more than the sum of its parts. Whereas previous studies have investigated the cognitive mechanisms supporting ensemble music production, the present study focuses on the perception of this collaboration. The stimuli in this study were recorded duets of improvised New Orleans jazz standards, varying in the opportunity musicians were given for collaboration, from fully live performances (2-way feedback), to studio dubbed performances (1-way feedback), to studio mixes (no feedback). Participants listened to these duets in a random order and either made an explicit judgment of whether or not they were live recordings (Experiment 1) or rated the recordings on four dimensions of musicality (Experiment 2). Participants in both experiments were also categorized according to their social aptitude (Autism Quotient) and according to their musical training (Musical Expertise Questionnaire). The results showed that many listeners are sensitive to musical collaboration in this setting, and among listeners with the least musical training this sensitivity was linked to their social aptitude. These findings demonstrate that the human ability to assess the quality of a social interaction (Blakemore & Decety, 2001) is present even when the interaction is auditory, nonverbal, and in a medium in which the listeners themselves are not skilled. They also imply an important link between social aptitude and the ability to perceive the quality of a musical interaction (Phillips-Silver & Keller, 2012).