Connectionist Interpretation of Affective Phenomenon Caused by Odd Number of Acoustic Beats

Abstract

Three-beat sounds are widely used in cheering. Five- or seven-syllable phrases are used in Japanese and Chinese traditional poems. Odd numbers of short sounds seem to relate to an affective phenomenon. Our experiment shows that a three-beat sound is the most exciting beat sound for people. We propose a neural-network model that relates to such a phenomenon. It is realized by the combination of neural networks with reciprocal-inhibition and cascade structures. We additionally take into account the effect of attention fluctuation. We simulate the neural-network operation, indicating that degree of excitement defined for the model takes the highest level for three beats. This result is consistent with our experimental result. When the attention fluctuation is suppressed, the degree of excitement takes higher levels for odd numbers of beats than even numbers of beats. This relates to the ground of five- or seven-syllable phrases used in Japanese and Chinese traditional poems.