Attentional Orientation in Ensemble Singing

This project contains data from a study examining how singers allocate attention during ensemble performance and how that allocation relates to their evaluation of the performance. Fifty-four singers organized into eighteen trios (16 amateur, 2 professional) performed two Renaissance pieces by Thomas Weelkes. After each performance, singers completed a post-performance questionnaire assessing their use of inward- and outward-facing performance strategies, joint action phenomenlogy, leadership dynamics, and subjective evaluations of the performance. Using exploratory factor analysis and structural equation modeling (with cluster-robust estimation to account for the nested trio structure), we tested whether performance strategies cluster into distinct inward and outward attentional orientations, how these orientations relate to performers' experience and evaluation of the performance, and how attentional orientation is shaped by leadership dynamics, performance errors, and familiarity with the music across repeated performances. Data include post-performance survey responses, performance accuracy/error coding, and leadership ratings, along with the EFA loadings and SEM output summarizing the primary analyses reported in the manuscript. This study was approved by the Princeton University Institutional Review Board (approval #16032). All participants provided written consent for participation and publication of their data. Authors: Madeline Kushan & Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis, Princeton University Funding: Princeton University's Program in Cognitive Science and the Princeton Music Cognition Lab