Behavioral Measures

Four Distinctions

At this point, some finer distinctions are in order. First, behavioral measures are a form of measurement of overt human behavior, such as movement, conscious responses to a presented stimulus, performance, and so on. Second, when used in the context of an experiment, the behavioral measures employed will be observed in terms of a dependent variable, the actual unit of measurement collected, such as the reaction time to a stimulus, the accuracy of a response selected by the participant, variations in performed tempo, and the like. Third, despite the orthographic similarity and partial conceptual overlap, behavioral measures are not equivalent to behaviorism, an approach to experimental psychology (pioneered by B. F. Skinner, E. L. Thorndike, and J. B. Watson) that deliberately omitted the role of the mind because it could not be observed directly. Behavioral measures imply no particular philosophy about cognition but simply refer to tools for observing and recording behavior, regardless of whether it occurs in the context of a psychological experiment. Fourth, by virtue of involving observations of overt actions, behavioral measures are but one of a number of measurement types, contrasting with others such as the following:

• 5.
  Introspection or self-report in which individuals describe psychological phenomena as they experience them;
• 6.
  Subjective measures, such as judgments, choices, or ratings of stimuli, presented to an experiment participant;
• 7.
  Physiological measures, including heart rate, galvanic skin response, and respiration; and
• 8.
  Neuroimaging measures, for example, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), positron emission tomography (PET), and electrophysiological measures, such as electroencephalogram (EEG) and magnetoencephalogram (MEG).

These categories are not necessarily clear-cut. The latter measure is arguably a subtype of the physiological category as it involves recording biological signals, albeit specific to the brain. Additionally, subjective measures may be considered a form of behavioral measure as they entail a consciously chosen response (i.e., behavior) to a presented stimulus. Indeed, this entry includes subjective measures as forms of behavioral measurement.

Using behavioral measures in an experimental context requires carefully controlled designs and stimuli and equally careful interpretation of the recorded responses. In so doing, behavioral measures provide an objective method of studying perception that has provided innumerable insights to human cognition, including music cognition. The drawbacks of this approach are that the reliability and validity of behavioral measures are not assured. Using the same measures can [Page 126]procure different results when the experiment is rerun, and the inferences involved in interpreting how the results apply to cognition may be faulty. Moreover, the controlled laboratory conditions required for such research makes it difficult to generalize to musical behavior in the real world. These limitations must be considered when interpreting data from a behavioral experiment.

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