Statistical techniques in music psychology: An update

Music psychology as a discipline has its origins at the end of the 19th century and ever since then, empirical methods have been a core part in this field of research. While its experimental and analytical methods have mainly been related to methodology employed in general psychology, several statistical techniques have emerged over the course of the past century being specific for empirical research in music psychology. These core methods have been described in a few didactic and summarising publications at several stages of the discipline’s history (see e.g. Wundt, 1882; Böttcher & Kerner, 1978; Windsor, 2001, or Beran, 2004 for a very technical overview), and these publications have been valuable resources to students and researchers alike. In contrast to these texts with a rather didactical focus, the objective of this chapter is to provide an overview of a range of novel statistical techniques that have been employed in recent years in music psychology research. This overview will give enough insight into each technique as such. The interested reader will then have to turn to the original publications, to obtain a more in-depth knowledge of the details related to maths and the field of application. Empirical research into auditory perception and the psychology of music might have its beginnings in the opening of the psychological laboratory by Wilhelm Wundt in Leipzig in 1879 where experiments on human perception were conducted, and standards for empirical research and analysis were developed. From the early stages until today, the psychology of music followed largely the topics and trends of