What makes musicians infer teaching intentions?

Perceiving pedagogical intentions is vital when learning skills from others. Here we investigated whether the modulations that expert pianists produce when they intend to teach are also perceived by listeners as conveying pedagogical intentions. Musicians listened to piano recordings where a musical expressive technique of either articulation or dynamics was implemented. They were asked to judge whether each recording was produced for teaching purposes or not. The findings in Experiment 1 with a simple musical scale demonstrated that the accuracy of musicians’ judgments was significantly above chance. Also, slower tempo contributed to musicians’ judgments as teaching regardless of the techniques. Moreover, performances with exaggeration for each technique were more likely to be judged as teaching. Experiment 2 aimed to replicate the findings of Experiment 1 with a more complex piece of music. The accuracy of musicians’ judgments was significantly above chance. In contrast to Experiment 1, only exaggerated dynamics were more likely to be judged as teaching. Taken together, the results indicate that recognition of some teaching intentions may be facilitated by low musical complexity.