Annotated Bibliography

1. Shahram Heshmat Ph.D. “5 Reasons Why We Listen to Music | Psychology Today” Psychology Today, 14 October 2021. 14 November 2024.

Background: This article talks about how people turn on music because they are motivated by specific goals And how music plays an important role in human well-being and health and how it can serve as an intervention to reduce stress.

How I Used It: I used this in my Rebuttal argument to support how music is meant to be a leisure activity and how it can help us reduce stress. This refuted the claims of the Paris Review which claims that music is meant to be a stimulating exercise and not a way to relieve stress.

2. “How to Really Listen to Music – The Paris Review” Rachel Ament. The Paris Review, 22 August 2019. 14 November 2024.

Background: This article discusses how listening to music should be an active experience, one that if done with a lot of effort, could push us deeper into understanding the complexity of songs.

How I Used It: I refuted this article in my Rebuttal Argument. I said that, while this may be true for some, listening to music, especially unfamiliar music, to create some sort of mental stimuli, is a niche art and that the majority of people listen to music to relax and unwind.

3. “Music and Emotions in the Brain: Familiarity Matters | PLOS ONE” Salimpoor, V. N., Benovoy, M., Longo, G. L., Cooperstock, J. R., & Zatorre, R. J. (2011). Music and emotions in the brain: Familiarity matters. PLOS ONE, 6(10), e25738.

Background: This article talks about a study that was done using a listening test and a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiment, to clarify the role of familiarity in the brain correlates of music appreciation by controlling, in the same study, for both familiarity and musical preferences. 

How I Used It: I used this article to show how songs that sound similar to other songs we normally listen to influences our music choice. And how others are even able to predict what we will choose to listen to by what we already do listen to. 

4. “Music Streaming Services Stats (2024)” Fabio Duarte. Exploding Topics, 1 February 2024. 3 November 2124.

Background: This article talks about how music streaming has completely changed the music industry. It has graphs that support the rapid and dramatic growth of streaming music.

How I Used It: I used this article honestly for the dramatic graph, almost as a marketing strategy just to show a shocking statistic that somewhat supports my argument to get the audience to favor me and my statistics.

5. “Our Aversion to the Unfamiliar | American Scientist” Judy Illes, Vivian Chin. American Scientist, 28 October 2021. 3 November 2024.

Background: This article talks about a book by Bruce Wexler called Brain and Culture that discusses a hypothesis that early wiring in the brain makes it hard for people later to accept novelty and unfamiliar experiences.

How I Used It: I used this article in the Definition Argument part of my essay to discuss how cultural differences can lead to unfamiliarity bias and how that can transfer to different musical cultures.

6. “Rapid Brain Responses to Familiar vs. Unfamiliar Music – an EEG and Pupillometry study | Scientific Reports” Current Opinion in Neurobiology. ScienceDirect, October 2023. 3 November 2024.

Background: This article discusses a study that used electroencephalography (EEG) and pupillometry to reveal the temporal signatures of the brain processes that allow differentiation between a familiar, well liked, and unfamiliar piece of music.

How I Used It: I used this article as scientific bases to support my argument. I talked about how we like familiarity and dislike things that are unfamiliar and how this study supports that that also transfers to musical preferences.

7. “Skin-to-skin contact – Baby Friendly Initiative” Skin-to-skin contact. 9 December 2024. 16 November 2024.

Background: This article discusses the importance of skin to skin contact right after birth and the benefits. Discusses the growing body of evidence that skin-to-skin contact after the birth helps babies and their mothers.

How I Used It: I used this article as an analogy for how we need things that are familiar to us to feel comfortable. This is shown scientifically through the importance of skin to skin contact between a mother and baby right after birth.

8. “The Contribution of Attention to the Mere Exposure Effect for Parts of Advertising Images – PMC” PubMed Central. National Library of Medicine, 5 September 2018. 3 November 2024.

Background: This article discusses how repeatedly presented stimuli are effectively evaluated more positively than novel stimuli.

How I Used It: I used this article to talk more about the mere exposure effect and how just seeing something more times makes you prefer it.

9. Bill Cates, “https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/cognitive-fluency-your-key-winning-more-clients-bill#:~:text=Cognitive%20fluency%20means%20clarity%20–%20the,process%20and%20understand%20that%20information.” Linkedin. 9 February 2023. 3 November 2024. 

Background: This article discusses what Cognitive Fluency is and how to harness it as a tool.

How I Used It: I used this article to define cognitive fluency, and to use the definition to further explain how familiarity with information means you prefer it better.