Applications

1
Applications

• MUSI 1911/2
• Introduction to the Psychology of Music

2
Overview

• Applied and basic research definitions and
  examples
• Why should we care about applied research?
• Who might benefit
• Applied research versus applying research
• Applied research drawbacks and advantages
• Applying research drawbacks and advantages
• Examples
• Summary

3
Applied and basic research definitions and
examples

• Basic research
• Research which has abstract aims
• How can we tell what key a piece is in?
• Applied research
• Research with practical aims
• Can we use knowledge about how we perceive key to
  automatically classify a set of pieces?

4
Why should we care about applied research?

• Easier to justify to sponsors
• Easier to define outcomes
• Of benefit to those outside a research community
• Forms links with other disciplines

5
Who might benefit?

• Technology
• Easier to use
• More intelligent
• Education
• Testing
• Assessment
• Curriculum design
• Educational software
• Musicology
• Testing of musicological theories
• Generation of new musicological theories
• Therapy
• Understanding of how therapy works
• Understanding of client-therapist communication

6
Applied research vs applying research

• Making things relevant versus doing relevant
  things
• Basic research can be applied by someone else
• Especially where it focuses on relevant issues
• E.g. we can study musical development which may
  be relevant to education
• Must be comprehensible to the end-user
• Applied research
• Practical outcomes explicit
• Known in advance

7
Applied research drawbacks and advantages

• Advantages
• practical
• end-use known
• focused

• Drawbacks
• restrictive
• of use only to a small audience?
• will only find out about issues which we think
  might be useful

8
Applying research drawbacks and advantages

• Advantages
• Unrestricted
• could be useful to many end-users
• may discover unexpected applications

• Drawbacks
• might turn out to be useless
• unpredictable
• can lack focus

9
Examples

• From past lectures
• Applied
• Sloboda, J. A., Davidson, J. W., Howe, M. J. A.
  and Moore, D. G. (1996). The role of practice in
  the development of expert musical performance.
  British Journal of Psychology, 87, 287-309.
• Basic (but with potential applications)
• Krumhansl, C. L. and Shepard, R. N. (1979).
  Quantification of the Hierarchy of Tonal
  Functions Within a Diatonic Context. Journal of
  Experimental Psychology Human Perception and
  Performance, 5 (4), 579-594.
• How might it be applied?

10
Summary

• Both applied and basic research may be practical
• Both have strengths and weaknesses in terms of
  their potential for finding applications
• Many potential end-users