Verbal and behavioral responses to familiar and unfamiliar music

Thirty adult subjects completed an Operant Music Listening Recorder (OMLR) task with two unfamiliar and two familiar music channels (one “popular” and one “classical” in each case), then rated the music on each channel on seven-point scales for liking, quality, and familiarity. The two familiar music channels received significantly higher ratings than the two unfamiliar channels on all three rating scales, and there were no significant main effects or interactions involving musical style. The predictions (a) that subjects would spend more time listening to the familiar channels on the OMLR task, and (b) that measures of listening time would display higher correlations with ratings of liking than with those of quality both received weak support from the direction of the results, but neither was confirmed by statistical significance tests. The results are discussed in terms of the fragmentation between the affective and evaluative components of attitudes toward music.     

How do location and control over the music influence listeners’ responses?

This study uses Mehrabian and Russell's ( 1974 ) Pleasure‐Arousal‐Dominance (PAD) model to consider how responses to both the music heard and overall in‐situ listening experience are influenced by the listener's degree of control over music selected for a particular listening episode and the location in which the listening takes place. Following recruitment via campus advertisements and a university research participation program, 216 individuals completed a background questionnaire and music listening task in a 3 (location) × 2 (experimenter‐ or participant‐selected music) design. After the listening task, participants completed a short questionnaire concerning the music they heard and the overall in‐situ listening experience. Results demonstrated that there was a positive relationship between control and liking for the music and episode, whether the former was considered in terms of: (1) whether the music was self‐selected or experimenter‐selected or (2) overt ratings of perceived control. Furthermore, the location and liking for the music were related to people's judgments of their enjoyment of the overall experience. This research indicates that the PAD model is a useful framework for understanding everyday music listening and supports the contention that, in a musical context, dominance may be operationalized as control over the music.     

Liking for happy- and sad-sounding music: Effects of exposure

We examined liking for happy- and sad-sounding music as a function of exposure, which varied both in quantity (number of exposures) and in quality (focused or incidental listening). Liking ratings were higher for happy than for sad music after focused listening, but similar after incidental listening. In the incidental condition, liking ratings increased linearly as a function of exposure. In the focused condition, liking ratings were an inverted U-shaped function of exposure, with initial increases in liking (after 2 exposures) followed by decreases (after 8 or 32 exposures). The results documented that: (1) sad music is liked as much as happy music in some instances; (2) frequency of exposure causes both familiarity (positive) and over-familiarity (negative) effects; and (3) effects of exposure on liking differ for focused and incidental listening.     

The effects of music on time perception and performance of a driving game

Cassidy, G.G. & MacDonald, R.A.R. (2010). The effects of music on time perception and performance of a driving game. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology 51, 455–464. There is an established and growing body of evidence highlighting that music can influence behavior across a range of diverse domains ( Miell, MacDonald, & Hargreaves 2005 ). One area of interest is the monitoring of “internal timing mechanisms”, with features such as tempo, liking, perceived affective nature and everyday listening contexts implicated as important ( North & Hargreaves, 2008 ). The current study addresses these issues by comparing the effects of self‐selected and experimenter‐selected music (fast and slow) on actual and perceived performance of a driving game activity. Seventy participants completed three laps of a driving game in seven sound conditions: (1) silence; (2) car sounds; (3) car sounds with self‐selected music, and car sounds with experimenter‐selected music; (4) high‐arousal (70 bpm); (5) high‐arousal (130 bpm); (6) low‐arousal (70 bpm); and (7) low‐arousal (130 bpm) music. Six performance measures (time, accuracy, speed, and retrospective perception of these), and four experience measures (perceived distraction, liking, appropriateness and enjoyment) were taken. Exposure to self‐selected music resulted in overestimation of elapsed time and inaccuracy, while benefiting accuracy and experience. In contrast, exposure to experimenter‐selected music resulted in poorest performance and experience. Increasing the tempo of experimenter‐selected music resulted in faster performance and increased inaccuracy for high‐arousal music, but did not impact experience. It is suggested that personal meaning and subjective associations connected to self‐selected music promoted increased engagement with the activity, overriding detrimental effects attributed to unfamiliar, less liked and less appropriate experimenter‐selected music.     

Hedonic arousal, time intervals, and excitation transfer

Zillmann’s (1978, 1983) excitation transfer theory was tested in relation to arousal processes opposite in hedonic valence. Sixty female subjects, randomly assigned to six experimental conditions, were initially exposed either to arousal stimulation positive in hedonic valence (sexual humor), or to arousal stimulation negative in hedonic valence (insulting remarks), or to a neutral unarousing task. In each condition, half of the subjects rated mildly arousing positively valenced male models’ photographs on several scales either immediately or with a 4 minute delay following prior arousal. In support of Zillmann’s theory, subjects in the positive hedonic arousal condition gave significantly lower photograph ratings on the arousal-related scales at the immediate, than at the delayed, rating time. However, contrary to Zillmann’s theory, the pattern of these ratings was reversed in the negative hedonic arousal condition, with the significantly higher ratings at the immediate, rather than delayed, rating time. Also, there were significant differences in these ratings among all three conditions both at the immediate and at the delayed rating time, but, as predicted, no significant differences were obtained for these ratings between the rating times in the control unarousing condition. The differences in excitation transfer between arousal processes positive and negative in hedonic valence may be due to their differences on a temporal dimension with regard to the speed of accumulation and the speed of dissipation of each arousal type.     

Liking and memory for musical stimuli as a function of exposure

Three experiments examined changes in liking and memory for music as a function of number of previous exposures, the ecological validity of the music, and whether the exposure phase required focused or incidental listening. After incidental listening, liking ratings were higher for music heard more often in the exposure phase and this association was stronger as ecological validity increased. After focused listening, liking ratings followed an inverted U-shaped function of exposure for the most ecologically valid stimuli (initial increases followed by decreases), but this curvilinear function was attenuated or nonexistent for less valid stimuli. In general, recognition improved as a function of previous exposure for focused listeners, but the effect was attenuated or absent for incidental listeners.     

Recognition memory for pictorial stimuli: biasing effects of stimulus emotionality

The possibility that stimulus emotionality might influence recognition bias in a long-term memory task was studied with respect to both the valence and arousal dimensions of emotion. For this purpose, we used 108 International Affective Picture System pictures that were representative of all regions of this two-dimensional space. Signal detection theory analysis was applied using A'and B' D as discrimination and bias measures, respectively. In general, the results showed that greater discrimination was accompanied by a response bias that was more conservative for pleasant and for unarousing pictures than for unpleasant and for arousing ones. These results provide new evidence in connection with the emotion-induced recognition bias in long-term memory performance.     

Performance in a substitution task and state anxiety following yoga in army recruits

140 men (M age = 30.3 yr., SD = 5.7) from the Indian army in north India participated in the study. They were naive to yoga and were assigned to yoga and breath awareness groups randomly, with 70 in each group. 20 healthy males of comparable age (M age = 33.7 yr., SD = 7.0) formed a comparison group. Their performance in a digit-letter substitution task and a state anxiety subscale was assessed immediately before and after two 45-min. sessions. The two groups of soldiers practiced either yoga or breath awareness. The comparison group listened to meditation music. Digit-letter substitution scores increased in both groups of army personnel and in the comparison group. State anxiety decreased after yoga and listening to meditation music, but not after breath awareness. This suggests that even in army personnel naive to yoga, a yoga-based intervention or listening to meditation music could reduce anxiety while increasing performance on an attention task.     

The effects of speech production and speech comprehension on simulated driving performance

We performed two experiments comparing the effects of speech production and speech comprehension on simulated driving performance. In both experiments, participants completed a speech task and a simulated driving task under single‐ and dual‐task conditions, with language materials matched for linguistic complexity. In Experiment 1, concurrent production and comprehension resulted in more variable velocity compared to driving alone. Experiment 2 replicated these effects in a more difficult simulated driving environment, with participants showing larger and more variable headway times when speaking or listening while driving than when just driving. In both experiments, concurrent production yielded better control of lane position relative to single‐task performance; concurrent comprehension had little impact on control of lane position. On all other measures, production and comprehension had very similar effects on driving. The results show, in line with previous work, that there are detrimental consequences for driving of concurrent language use. Our findings imply that these detrimental consequences may be roughly the same whether drivers are producing speech or comprehending it. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Distinct effects of positive and negative music on older adults' auditory target identification performances

Older adults, compared to younger adults, are more likely to attend to pleasant situations and avoid unpleasant ones. Yet, it is unclear whether such a phenomenon may be generalized to musical emotions. In this study, we investigated whether there is an age-related difference in how musical emotions are experienced and how positive and negative music influences attention performances in a target identification task. Thirty-one young and twenty-eight older adults were presented with 40 musical excerpts conveying happiness, peacefulness, sadness, and threat. While listening to music, participants were asked to rate their feelings and monitor each excerpt for the occurrence of an auditory target. Compared to younger adults, older adults reported experiencing weaker emotional activation when listening to threatening music and showed higher level of liking for happy music. Correct reaction times (RTs) for target identification were longer for threatening than for happy music in older adults but not in younger adults. This suggests that older adults benefit from a positive musical context and can regulate emotion elicited by negative music by decreasing attention towards it (and therefore towards the auditory target).     

Can preference for background music mediate the irrelevant sound effect?

Research suggests that listening to background music prior to task performance increases cognitive processes, such as attention and memory, through the mechanism of increasing arousal and positive mood. However, music preference has not been explored with regard to a more common and realistic scenario of concurrent music and cognition, namely the ‘irrelevant sound effect’ (ISE). To examine this, serial recall was tested under quiet, liked and disliked music sound conditions as well as steady‐state (repetition of ‘3’) and changing‐state speech (random digits 1–9). Results revealed performance to be poorer for both music conditions and the changing‐state speech compared to quiet and steady‐state speech conditions. The lack of difference between both music conditions suggests that preference does not affect serial recall performance. These findings are discussed within the music and cognition and auditory distraction literatures. Copyright © 2010 JohnWiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Interaction of attentional and motor control processes in handwriting

The interaction between attentional capacity, motor control processes, and strategic adaptations to changing task demands was investigated in handwriting, a continuous (rather than discrete) skilled performance. Twenty-four subjects completed 12 two-minute handwriting samples under instructions stressing speeded handwriting, normal handwriting, or highly legible handwriting. For half of the writing samples, a concurrent auditory monitoring task was imposed. Subjects copied either familiar (English) or unfamiliar (Latin) passages. Writing speed, legibility ratings, errors in writing and in the secondary auditory task, and a derived measure of the average number of characters held in short-term memory during each sample ("planning unit size") were the dependent variables. The results indicated that the ability to adapt to instructions stressing speed or legibility was substantially constrained by the concurrent listening task and by text familiarity. Interactions between instructions, task concurrence, and text familiarity in the legibility ratings, combined with further analyses of planning unit size, indicated that information throughput from temporary storage mechanisms to motor processes mediated the loss of flexibility effect. Overall, the results suggest that strategic adaptations of a skilled performance to changing task circumstances are sensitive to concurrent attentional demands and that departures from "normal" or "modal" performance require attention.     

Manual motor reaction while being absorbed into popular music

In three experiments, we investigated the behavioral consequences of being absorbed into music on performance in a concurrent task. We tested two competing hypotheses: Based on a cognitive load account, captivation of attention by the music and state absorption might slow down reactions in the decisional task. Alternatively, music could induce spontaneous motor activity, and being absorbed in music might result in a more autonomous, flow-driven behavior with quicker motor reactions. Participants performed a simple, visual, two-alternative forced-choice task while listening to popular musical excerpts. Subsequently, they rated their subjective experience using a short questionnaire. We presented music in four tempo categories (between 80 and 140 BPM) to account for a potential effect of tempo and an interaction between tempo and absorption. In Experiment 1, absorption was related to decreased reaction times (RTs) in the visual task. This effect was small, as expected in this setting, but replicable in Experiment 2. There was no effect of the music’s tempo on RTs but a tendency of mind wandering to relate to task performance. After slightly changing the study setting in Experiment 3, flow predicted decreased RTs, but absorption alone — as part of the flow construct — did not predict RTs. To sum up, we demonstrated that being absorbed in music can have the behavioral consequence of speeded manual reactions in specific task contexts, and people seem to integrate the music into an active, flow-driven and therefore enhanced performance. However, shown relations depend on task settings, and a systematic study of context is necessary to understand how induced states and their measurement contribute to the findings.     

Stimulus expectancy modulates inferior frontal gyrus and premotor cortex activity in auditory perception

In studies on auditory speech perception, participants are often asked to perform active tasks, e.g. decide whether the perceived sound is a speech sound or not. However, information about the stimulus, inherent in such tasks, may induce expectations that cause altered activations not only in the auditory cortex, but also in frontal areas such as inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and motor cortices, even in the absence of an explicit task. To investigate this, we applied spectral mixes of a flute sound and either vowels or specific music instrument sounds (e.g. trumpet) in an fMRI study, in combination with three different instructions. The instructions either revealed no information about stimulus features, or explicit information about either the music instrument or the vowel features. The results demonstrated that, besides an involvement of posterior temporal areas, stimulus expectancy modulated in particular a network comprising IFG and premotor cortices during this passive listening task.     

The effects of operating a touch screen smartphone and other common activities performed while bicycling on cycling behaviour

Although it has been shown that making phone calls or sending text messages while riding a bicycle can have a negative impact on bicyclist’s behaviour, in countries such as the Netherlands the operation of a mobile phone while cycling on a bicycle is not illegal and is actually quite common. In recent years conventional mobile phones with a physical keypad are increasingly being replaced by smartphones with a touch screen. The operation of a touch screen phone ironically cannot be done purely ‘by touch’ due to the lack of tactile feedback, and instead requires fixations on a relatively small screen. The question therefore can be asked whether the operation of touch screen telephones deteriorates cycling behaviour more than operation of a conventional mobile phone.Twenty-four participants completed a track on their own bicycle while sending a text message from a conventional and a touch screen mobile phone. In addition the effects of other common activities that can accompany bicycling were studied, including texting at the same time as listening to music, talking on a mobile phone or cycling next to someone and speaking with this companion, and playing a game on a touch screen phone while bicycling. The impacts of all the above conditions on cycling performance and visual detection performance were compared with control conditions in which participants cycled with either one or two hands on the handlebars and were not required to perform any secondary tasks.Bicycle speed was reduced in all telephone conditions and in the condition when cycling next to someone. Lateral position variation increased in all telephone conditions. Use of the touch screen led to a more central position in the cycle lane and resulted in worse visual detection performance compared with the operation of a conventional mobile phone. The main effect of listening to music was that an auditory signal to stop cycling was missed by 83% of the participants. In conclusion, while all investigated types of phone deteriorated cycling performance, the use of a touch phone has a larger negative effect on cycling performance than a conventional mobile phone. With touch screen smartphones taking the place of conventional mobile phones and being used for other purposes than verbal communication, these effects on cycling performance pose a threat to traffic safety.     

An examination of an enhancing effect of music on attentional abilities in older persons with mild cognitive impairment

While the effect of listening to music on cognitive abilities is highly debated, studies reporting an enhancing effect of music in elderly populations appear to be more consistent. In this study, the effects of listening to music on attention in groups of cognitively normal older adults and those with mild cognitive impairment were considered. Participants were exposed to both a music and silence condition, and after each condition performed Digit Span and Coding tasks which require attention for maximal performance. The hypothesis that listening to music, compared to a silence condition, enhances performance was not supported for either group. Various explanations for these findings are considered.     

The Mozart Effect: An Artifact of Preference

The "Mozart effect" reported by Rauscher, Shaw, and Ky (1993, 1995) indicates that spatial-temporal abilities are enhanced after listening to music composed by Mozart. We replicated and extended the effect in Experiment 1: Performance on a spatial-temporal task was better after participants listened to a piece composed by Mozart or by Schubert than after they sat in silence. In Experiment 2, the advantage for the music condition disappeared when the control condition consisted of a narrated story instead of silence. Rather, performance was a function of listeners' preference (music or story), with better performance following the preferred condition.     

Benefit of enactment over oral repetition of verbal instruction does not require additional working memory during encoding

For this research, we used a dual-task approach to investigate the involvement of working memory in following written instructions. In two experiments, participants read instructions to perform a series of actions on objects and then recalled the instructions either by spoken repetition or performance of the action sequence. Participants engaged in concurrent articulatory suppression, backward-counting, and spatial-tapping tasks during the presentation of the instructions, in order to disrupt the phonological-loop, central-executive, and visuospatial-sketchpad components of working memory, respectively. Recall accuracy was substantially disrupted by all three concurrent tasks, indicating that encoding and retaining verbal instructions depends on multiple components of working memory. The accuracy of recalling the instructions was greater when the actions were performed than when the instructions were repeated, and this advantage was unaffected by the concurrent tasks, suggesting that the benefit of enactment over oral repetition does not cost additional working memory resources.     

The Effects of Self-Esteem,Task Label,and Performance Feedback on Task Liking and Intrinsic Motivation

Abstract

American undergraduate students' task liking and intrinsic motivation were examined using 2 × 2 × 2 (Self-Esteem × Task Label × Feedback) analyses of variance. Identical tasks were labeled as either difficult or easy, and bogus performance feedback was given randomly to each subject. For subjects with high self-esteem, feedback had strong impact on their liking of a difficult task, whereas for those with low self-esteem, feedback had strong impact on liking of an easy task. After positive feedback for performing a difficult task, subjects with high self-esteem increased task liking, whereas those with low self-esteem decreased task liking. Subjects also showed higher intrinsic motivation after positive feedback than after negative feedback.     

Personality and aesthetic preference in Spain and England: two studies relating sensation seeking and openness to experience to liking for paintings and music

In two studies, one employing Spanish students and the other English students, questionnaire measures of Sensation Seeking and Openness to Experience were correlated with liking for major music types, several short music excerpts, and eight categories of painting (presented as slides). Inter‐correlations between music preference measures, painting preference, and personality are reported. In both samples, the Sensation Seeking Scale (Form V) and, particularly, the Experience Seeking sub‐scale were associated with a factor contrasting liking for ‘hard rock’ music and ‘violent–abstract’ art with liking for ‘neutral–realistic’ art and ‘easy listening’ music. Several substantial relationships between aesthetics measures and Openness to Experience (from the NEO‐PI‐R) were also found, though mostly in the English sample. The results reinforce the view that personality dimensions such as Sensation Seeking and Openness are important influences on aesthetic judgment. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.