Empirical aesthetics has found its way into mainstream cognitive science. Until now, most
research has focused either on identifying the internal processes that underlie a perceiver's …

Why do humans make music? Theories of the evolution of musicality have focused mainly
on the value of music for specific adaptive contexts such as mate selection, parental care …

The concept of cultural evolution was fundamental to the foundation of academic musicology
and the subfield of comparative musicology, but largely disappeared from discussion after …

INTRODUCTION Music is often assumed to be a human universal, emerging from an
evolutionary adaptation specific to music and/or a by-product of adaptations for affect …

Music comprises a diverse category of cognitive phenomena that likely represent both the
effects of psychological adaptations that are specific to music (eg, rhythmic entrainment) and …

Music is present in every known society but varies from place to place. What, if anything, is
universal to music cognition? We measured a signature of mental representations of rhythm …

Speech and song have been transmitted orally for countless human generations, changing
over time under the influence of biological, cognitive, and cultural pressures. Cross-cultural …

Many foundational questions in the psychology of music require cross-cultural approaches,
yet the vast majority of work in the field to date has been conducted with Western …

When interacting with infants, humans often alter their speech and song in ways thought to
support communication. Theories of human child-rearing, informed by data on vocal …

Are there universal patterns in musical preferences? To address this question, we built on
theory and research in personality, cultural, and music psychology to map the terrain of …