Arousal, Mood, and the Mozart Effect

The "Mozart effect" refers to claims that people perform better on tests of spatial abilities after listening to music composed by Mozart. We examined whether the Mozart effect is a consequence of between-condition differences in arousal and mood. Participants completed a test of spatial abilities after listening to music or sitting in silence. The music was a Mozart sonata (a pleasant and energetic piece) for some participants and an Albinoni adagio (a slow, sad piece) for others. We also measured enjoyment, arousal, and mood. Performance on the spatial task was better following the music than the silence condition, but only for participants who heard Mozart. The two music selections also induced differential responding on the enjoyment, arousal, and mood measures. Moreover, when such differences were held constant by statistical means, the Mozart effect disappeared. These findings provide compelling evidence that the Mozart effect is an artifact of arousal and mood.     

莫扎特音乐对幼儿时空推理能力影响的研究

音乐对幼儿身心发展起重要的促进作用.利用实验法探讨莫扎特“D大调双钢琴奏鸣曲”(K.448)对幼儿时空推理能力的影响,并试图探究“莫扎特效应”产生的机制.采用相同唤醒度和情绪效价但不同结构化和周期性的三首音乐为刺激,共342名大班幼儿参与实验.结果显示:高度结构化、长时程周期性的莫扎特音乐K.448显著提高了女童时空推理能力,而在男童未发现此效应;而不具备高度结构化与周期性的科普兰“猫和老鼠”类似无声静息,对幼儿时空推理能力无显著影响.综上,产生“莫扎特效应”,音乐需具备长时程周期性和高度结构化特点,支持“直接启动说”理论.     

Another failure to generalize the Mozart effect

Several studies have not replicated Rauscher, Shaw, and Ky's 1993 finding that 10 minutes of exposure to Mozart piano music temporarily enhanced performance on three spatial reasoning tasks. Later Rauscher and Shaw argued that enhanced performance is unlikely unless three conditions are met. The present study was designed to meet those three conditions. 36 adults were exposed to one of six listening orders and one of six test orders. Listening and test orders had no systematic effect on spatial reasoning performance. A one-factor, repeated-measures analysis of variance yielded no significant difference on spatial reasoning performance after listening to classical music, jazz, or silence. A reanalysis, using only those items most likely to tap spatial reasoning, fell short of significance, and mean scores were in the direction opposite to that hypothesized. These results were inconsistent with studies that have supported a Mozart effect.     

The Mystery of the Mozart Effect: Failure to Replicate

The Mozart effect is the purported increase in spatial-reasoning performance immediately after exposure to a Mozart piano sonata. Several laboratories have been unable to confirm the existence of the effect despite two positive reports from the original laboratory. The authors of the original studies have provided a list of key procedural components to produce the effect. This experiment attempted to produce a Mozart effect by following those procedural instructions and replicating the procedure of one of the original positive reports. The experiment failed to produce either a statistically significant Mozart effect or an effect size suggesting practical significance. This general lack of effect is consistent with previous work by other investigators. We conclude that there is little evidence to support basing intellectual intervention programs on the existence of the Mozart effect.     

An investigation into the temporal dimension of the Mozart effect: evidence from the attentional blink task

In the present study, we examined whether the 'Mozart effect' would influence participants' temporal attention using a visual attentional blink (AB) task that provides a reliable measure of the temporal dynamics of visual attention. The 'Mozart effect' refers to the specific claim that listening to Mozart's Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major, K.448 can improve the performance in spatio-temporal tasks. Participants had to try and identify two target digits (in their correct order of presentation) presented amongst a stream of distractor letters in three different conditions (presented in separate blocks of trials): while listening to the Mozart sonata played normally, while listening to the same Mozart sonata played in reverse, and while in silence. The results showed that the participants were able to detect the second target (T2) significantly more accurately (given the correct detection of the first target, T1) in the AB stream when the Mozart sonata was played normally than in either of the other two conditions. Possible explanations for the differential effects of Mozart's music being played normally and in reverse and potential confounds in previous studies reporting a facilitatory 'Mozart effect' are discussed. Our results therefore provide the first empirical demonstration supporting the existence of a purely temporal component to the 'Mozart effect' using a non-spatial visual AB task.     

奏鸣曲式中调性结构对紧张感的影响——以莫扎特与贝多芬钢琴奏鸣曲为例

音乐紧张感是音乐聆听的基础与重要环节。本研究选取莫扎特与贝多芬的音乐作品, 运用紧张感模型计算与行为实验两种方法, 探讨奏鸣曲式中的调性结构对紧张感的影响。研究发现, 奏鸣曲中呈示部、展开部与再现部三部分的紧张感变化具有差异, 展开部的紧张感高于呈示部与再现部, 再现部的紧张感高于呈示部, 这源于转调距离与转调频率的差异。本研究探讨了在大尺度的真实音乐作品中调性结构对紧张感的影响, 为音乐学领域的研究提供佐证和新的视角。     

Upbeat and happy: Arousal as an important factor in studying attention

The present study examined the effects of music-induced mood changes on different components of visual attention. Affective valence (positive vs. negative) and arousal (high vs. low) were manipulated by having participants listen to one of four versions of a Mozart Sonata that varied in mode (major or minor) and tempo (fast or slow). Attention was measured in three domains—alerting, orienting, and executive control. Affective valence and arousal had an effect on executive control, but not on alerting or orienting. Individuals who experienced positive valence had less efficient control over their responses than those who experienced negative valence, but only when arousal levels were high. Positive and negative valence did not influence executive control measures when arousal levels were low. These findings demonstrate that affective valence and arousal interact with one another to influence the processing of items in visual attention.     

Upbeat and happy: arousal as an important factor in studying attention

The present study examined the effects of music-induced mood changes on different components of visual attention. Affective valence (positive vs. negative) and arousal (high vs. low) were manipulated by having participants listen to one of four versions of a Mozart Sonata that varied in mode (major or minor) and tempo (fast or slow). Attention was measured in three domains-alerting, orienting, and executive control. Affective valence and arousal had an effect on executive control, but not on alerting or orienting. Individuals who experienced positive valence had less efficient control over their responses than those who experienced negative valence, but only when arousal levels were high. Positive and negative valence did not influence executive control measures when arousal levels were low. These findings demonstrate that affective valence and arousal interact with one another to influence the processing of items in visual attention.     

Reasoning and concurrent timing: a study of the mechanisms underlying the effect of emotion on reasoning

Negative emotions typically have an adverse effect on reasoning, especially analytic or logical reasoning. This effect can be explained using an attentional framework in which emotion detracts limited-capacity cognitive resources which are required for reasoning. Another possibility is that the effect of emotion on reasoning is mediated by arousal, as previous research has shown that physiological arousal can be associated with decreased reasoning performance. In this research, we used a dual-task paradigm combining a syllogistic reasoning task and a time production task. Prospective timing allows to disentangle the effects of attention and arousal: time productions should lengthen if emotion takes up cognitive resources that are therefore not available for timing, whereas time productions should shorten if emotional reasoning results from increased arousal. Results from two experiments confirm the adverse impact of emotion on logical reasoning performance. Reasoning about emotional contents led to lengthened time productions, which suggests that the capture of limited cognitive resources is the main factor accounting for the adverse effect of emotion on reasoning and not arousal.     

Arousal as an explanation for differences in rats selectively bred for differential alcohol sensitivity

A common error made by behavior genetics researchers is breeding two lines for differences in central arousal rather than for a specific behavioral feature. Two lines of rats (Riley, Freed, & Lester, 1976) were selectively bred for locomotor impairment in response to a subhypnotic dose (1.5 g/kg) of ethanol. These lines (designated "most affected" and "least affected") were compared in a variety of tests and showed differences in a number of phenotypic traits in addition to locomotor impairment to ethanol. The published findings have been interpreted in light of a hypothesis suggesting adventitiously selected differences in central arousal between the two lines. This interpretation showed that their usefulness as animal models of alcoholism is seriously compromised.     

Enhanced conflict-driven cognitive control by emotional arousal,not by valence

Emotion is widely agreed to have two dimensions, valence and arousal. Few studies have explored the effect of emotion on conflict adaptation by considering both of these, which could have dissociate influence. The present study aimed to fill the gap as to whether emotional valence and arousal would exert dissociable influence on conflict adaptation. In the experiments, we included positive, neutral, and negative conditions, with comparable arousal between positive and negative conditions. Both positive and negative conditions have higher arousal than neutral ones. In Experiment 1, by using a two-colour-word Flanker task, we found that conflict adaptation was enhanced in both positive and negative contexts compared to a neutral context. Furthermore, this effect still existed when controlling stimulus–response repetitions in Experiment 2, which used a four-colour-word Flanker task. The findings suggest emotional arousal enhances conflict adaptation, regardless of emotional valence. Thus, future studies should consider emotional arousal when studying the effect of emotion on conflict adaptation. Moreover, the unique role of the emotional context in conflict-driven cognitive control is emphasised.     

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.     

Framing deductive reasoning with emotional content: An fMRI study

In the literature concerning the study of emotional effect on cognition, several researches highlight the mechanisms of reasoning ability and the influence of emotions on this ability. However, up to now, no neuroimaging study was specifically devised to directly compare the influence on reasoning performance of visual task-unrelated with semantic task-related emotional information.In the present functional fMRI study, we devised a novel paradigm in which emotionally negative vs. neutral visual stimuli (context) were used as primes, followed by syllogisms composed of propositions with emotionally negative vs. neutral contents respectively. Participants, in the MR scanner, were asked to assess the logical validity of the syllogisms. We have therefore manipulated the emotional state and arousal induced by the visual prime as well as the emotional interference exerted by the syllogism content.fMRI data indicated a medial prefrontal cortex deactivation and lateral/dorsolateral prefrontal cortex activation in conditions with negative context. Furthermore, a lateral/dorsolateral prefrontal cortex modulation caused by syllogism content was observed. Finally, behavioral data confirmed the influence of emotional task-related stimuli on reasoning ability, since the performance was worse in conditions with syllogisms involving negative emotions. Therefore, on the basis of these data, we conclude that emotional states can impair the performance in reasoning tasks by means of the delayed general reactivity, whereas the emotional content of the target may require a larger amount of top-down resources to be processed.     

"Central arousal" and sexual responsiveness in the snail, Helix aspersa

In molluscs, a "central arousal" system is thought to positively modulate both an animal's level of activity and its behavioral responsiveness. This hypothesis is examined in Helix aspersa by testing the relationships between activity, feeding, and sexual behavior. Activity, feeding, and mating exhibit parallel daily rhythms. Snails are most active, and eat and mate most frequently, during scotophase and the first 3 h of photophase. Handling and injections of serotonin (5 x 10(-7) m/kg body wt) increase general activity. Inducing activity during late photophase increases food consumption, but it does not induce sexual activity. Moreover, serotonin and handling have no effect on sexual arousal; treated snails show no increase in genital eversion stage and require the same length of courtship as controls. If snails are sexually deprived, increasing activity in late photophase does increase copulation frequency, but snails do not copulate more frequently than do unhandled snails tested during early photophase. These results suggest that while manipulations thought to increase central arousal do increase activity and responsiveness to food stimuli, they do not directly affect sexual proclivity or sexual arousal. Moreover, the relationship between feeding and sexual behavior differs between Helix and Aplysia. This difference between the two species may be related to the differences in their reproductive strategies.     

Infant memory for musical experiences

Recent findings suggest that infants can remember words from stories over 2 week delays (Jusczyk, P. W., & Hohne, E. A. (1997). Infants' memory for spoken words. Science, 277, 1984-1986). Because music, like language, presents infants with a massively complex auditory learning task, it is possible that infant memory for musical stimuli is equally powerful. Seven-month-old infants heard two Mozart sonata movements daily for 2 weeks. Following a 2 week retention interval, the infants were tested on passages of the familiarized music, and passages taken from similar but novel music. Results from two experiments suggest that the infants retained the familiarized music in long-term memory, and that their listening preferences were affected by the extent to which familiar passages were removed from the musical contexts within which they were originally learned.     

Are cognitive symptoms of schizophrenia mediated by abnormalities in emotional arousal?

We tested 28 individuals with schizophrenia (SZ) and 16 healthy individuals on a test of logical reasoning and "cognitive gating," defined as the ability to discriminate between relevant and irrelevant information in confirming or disconfirming a given belief. The Logical Reasoning and Cognitive Gating Task tests both processes under neutral and affect-laden conditions. This is done by presenting formally identical constructs using benign and emotionally arousing language. When separated by symptom profiles, we found statistically significant differences for performance and arousal response between patients with delusions, patients with formal thought disorder, and patients with neither delusions nor formal thought disorder, as well as between patients and healthy controls. When analyzed by error type, we found that nearly all errors by delusional patients were caused by overly restrictive information choice, a pattern that may be related to a delusional patient's tendency to "jump to conclusions" on Bayesian probabilistic tasks. This is in contrast to patients with formal thought disorder, whose low performance resulted also from overly extensive information choice. The tendencies towards restriction were exacerbated by arousal, which is consistent with studies on cognition and arousal in healthy individuals. After briefly examining research on emotional arousal and SZ, and the interaction between emotional arousal and restriction of perceptual cues in healthy individuals, we conclude by suggesting a model which accounts for the distinctive cognitive characteristics of delusional patients by their possessing distinct vulnerabilities to emotional arousal. Specifically, these results suggest the possibility that delusional patients process information in a manner that is essentially intact. However, delusional patients may possess an acute vulnerability to emotional arousal that might cause delusional individuals to behave cognitively as if they were healthy individuals under significantly more severe forms of stress.     

Self-representation in mediated environments: the experience of emotions modulated by auditory-vibrotactile heartbeat.

In 1890, William James hypothesized that emotions are our perception of physiological changes. Many different theories of emotion have emerged since then, but it has been demonstrated that a specifically induced physiological state can influence an individual's emotional responses to stimuli. In the present study, auditory and/or vibrotactile heartbeat stimuli were presented to participants (N = 24), and the stimuli's effect on participants' physiological state and subsequent emotional attitude to affective pictures was measured. In particular, we aimed to investigate the effect of the perceived distance to stimuli on emotional experience. Distant versus close sound reproduction conditions (loudspeakers vs. headphones) were used to identify whether an "embodied" experience can occur in which participants would associate the external heartbeat sound with their own. Vibrotactile stimulation of an experimental chair and footrest was added to magnify the experience. Participants' peripheral heartbeat signals, self-reported valence (pleasantness) and arousal (activation) ratings for the pictures, and memory performance scores were collected. Heartbeat sounds significantly affected participants' heartbeat, the emotional judgments of pictures, and their recall. The effect of distance to stimuli was observed in the significant interaction between the spatial location of the heartbeat sound and the vibrotactile stimulation, which was mainly caused by the auditory-vibrotactile interaction in the loudspeakers condition. This interaction might suggest that vibrations transform the far sound condition (sound via loudspeakers) in a close-stimulation condition and support the hypothesis that close sounds are more affective than distant ones. These findings have implications for the design and evaluation of mediated environments.     

Attribution and aggression: The misattribution of anger

An experiment was designed to test the effect of misattribution of anger on subsequent aggression. Subjects were induced to take a placebo with half of the subjects led to expect arousal symptoms and the other half led to expect relaxation. Crosscutting the pill manipulation, half of the subjects were provoked by a confederate and half were not. All subjects were then given an opportunity to aggress against the confederate. As predicted, relaxation pill-provoked subjects were significantly more aggressive than subjects in the other conditions (p < .025), with arousal pill-provoked subjects no more aggressive than no provocation controls.     

Congruent bodily arousal promotes the constructive recognition of emotional words

Considerable research has shown that bodily states shape affect and cognition. Here, we examined whether transient states of bodily arousal influence the categorization speed of high arousal, low arousal, and neutral words. Participants realized two blocks of a constructive recognition task, once after a cycling session (increased arousal), and once after a relaxation session (reduced arousal). Results revealed overall faster response times for high arousal compared to low arousal words, and for positive compared to negative words. Importantly, low arousal words were categorized significantly faster after the relaxation than after the cycling, suggesting that a decrease in bodily arousal promotes the recognition of stimuli matching one’s current arousal state. These findings highlight the importance of the arousal dimension in emotional processing, and suggest the presence of arousal-congruency effects.     

Demand characteristics of music affect performance on the Wonderlic Personnel Test Of Intelligence

This study examined whether demand characteristics concerning music can change subjects' performance on the Wonderlic Personnel Test of intelligence. Participants (N= 60) were randomly assigned and informed either that Mozart's music typically enhances cognitive performance or diminishes it. They then completed the Wonderlic Personnel Test while listening to a Mozart piano sonata. The subjects with a positive set answered significantly more items correctly on the test (14%) than those with a negative set (p = .03). This result may hold implications for the study of the 'Mozart effect'.