Listening to music: Similarities and differences between normal and schizophrenic people

Abstract

The hypothesis that the meanings attributed to music, although broad, are not unlimited, and should be similar in two groups (people considered normal and people considered schizophrenic) was risen in a research carried out on the listening to music at the Institute of Psychiatry at Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro. Four recorded segments were selected. Video tapes were made to record the verbal references to the segments, in order to look for similarities and differences between the two groups. An analysis of content of speech was made over the transcription of the tapes. It was possible to observe that schizophrenic and normal persons attribute similar meanings to music, although these meanings are influenced by the experiences of each one.