Sweet Anticipation: Music and the Psychology of Expectation

In the glossary to Sweet Anticipation: Music and the Psychology of Expectation by David Huron, the term sweet anticipation is defined as “the positive feelings that arise from conscious thought about some future event”. As such, the term constitutes a rather strange choice of title for a book that focuses to a large extent on unconscious processes involved in musical expectation. Presumably, the intention was to place emphasis on “positive feelings” since this account differs from most written by researchers in music cognition in terms of the prominence it gives to music’s ability to invoke pleasure. However, Huron’s approach is distinctive in other ways. The prominence given to psychological theories, models and methods as tools for understanding music will come as no surprise for those familiar with his field of research. But the emphasis on taking subjective musical experience seriously, modelling music perception as a process of (statistical) learning, examining music from wide range of cultures and understanding cognition in an evolutionary context represent characteristic hallmarks of this work. We shall return to these themes in more detail later on. In a recent review of Daniel J. Levitin’s book This is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession, David Huron notes the advantages brought to a field of study by having a popular champion and laments the fact that, in spite of being in its “golden age”, research in music cognition “has not been communicated beyond a small coterie of professionals” (Huron, 2006, p. 5). It seems likely that this was a strong motivating factor for Huron himself in writing Sweet Anticipation. However, in spite of the informal and times rather anecdotal style (which some will find engaging and others irritating), the technical content and length of this book would probably put it beyond the casually interested member of the public. Rather, the intended audience appears to have been individuals with some technical knowledge of fields of research related to (but distinct from) music cognition. These fall into two camps: first (and foremost), the book is written for musicians (including composers) and musicologists (including music theorists); and second, it is hoped that it will be of interest to researchers in cognitive science and (evolutionary) psychology. Considering the latter group, it is important to note that Huron often bases his arguments on psychological theories and results, and occasionally offers new perspectives based on his own theory (e.g., a new interpretation of the well-established mere exposure effect). He also presents several arguments for the relevance of music as a useful test bed for a general theory of expectation: first, it is more constrained than most everyday instances of expectation; second, musical activities often involve the active manipulation of expectation; and third, detailed records of the stimulus structure exist in the form of scores. Although it is not stated explicitly, it is worth making a further point (dependent on these three) that music potentially offers a source of more ecologically valid stimuli than those usually used in the experimental study of human expectations (e.g., Saffran et al., 1999). Although the book’s detailed treatment of music probably requires some musical background, there is generally a clear demarcation between the presentation of the theory and its application to music while the comprehensive glossary and availability on the Internet of audio clips corresponding to all notated figures will help enormously in this regard.