Running head: MUSIC AND AUDITORY AFFECTIVE PRIMING ON COGNITION 1

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1 Running head: MUSIC AND AUDITORY AFFECTIVE PRIMING ON COGNITION 1 The Effects of Music and Auditory Affective Priming on Cognition Daniel Andre Ignacio, B.A. California State University, Fullerton: Psychology Department, M.S. Clinical Psychology IRB Approval Code: HSR (expires November 25, 2014)

2 MUSIC AND AUDITORY AFFECTIVE PRIMING ON COGNITION 2 The Effects of Music and Auditory Affective Priming on Cognition Daniel Andre Ignacio Cal State Fullerton The present research investigates how music affects cognitive processing through the creation of expectations or emotional arousal. The present research will be the first study to utilize auditory affective priming, a novel paradigm, to investigate the effects of lower-level psychoacoustic features on working memory. Emotion has been observed to enhance memory (Buchanan, 2007; Kensinger, 2009) from identification and recognition (Estes & Adelman, 2008) to recall of emotional stimuli (Doerksen & Shimamura, 2001). Working memory is the cognitive ability to retain separate pieces of information in a mental state that allows for usage in future mental tasks (Hill et al., 2010). Emotional arousal influences the consolidation of working memory into long-term memory (LaBar & Phelps, 1998); it also induces the pleasure experienced by music listeners (Van den Bosch, Salimpoor, & Zatorre, 2013). Music may affect cognition by facilitating or priming the neural pathways involved in the cognitive process. The results of the study by Salimpoor et al. (2011) present the first direct evidence that associates dopaminergic activity in the neural reward system with pleasure derived from music. Dopamine influences the limbic system by signaling motivationally salient events to the subject; this particular monoamine affects the hippocampus, which is primarily responsible for memory consolidation (Shohamy & Adcock, 2010). The primary researcher hopes to illustrate the potential of particular chord progressions to facilitate tasks relevant for learning. The first experiment hypothesizes that the experimental condition (i.e. 5-chord progressions) will produce significantly faster reaction times (RT) than the control condition (i.e. one-chord progressions). The second hypothesis predicts that congruently paired trials of positive -chords and words of a positive valence in the experimental condition will produce the fastest RT

3 MUSIC AND AUDITORY AFFECTIVE PRIMING ON COGNITION 3 among the three other levels (i.e. negative chords with negative words, negative chords with positive words, and positive chords with negative words). The third hypothesis expects that the level with the fastest RT would result in the most recalled words. The second experiment in the present study hypothesizes that the experimental condition will produce significantly faster reaction times (RT) than the control conditions (i.e. silence and progressions of the same chord). Method Participants The participants for the first experiment of this study were psychology (n = 27) and nonpsychology (n = 13) undergraduate students (N = 40) between the ages of 18 and 26 (M age = 20.68) at California State University, Fullerton (CSUF). The study sample consisted of nine males and 31 females; there were five left-handed participants, while the rest were right-handed (n = 35). The average duration of musical experience was in the five to 10 years range; operationalized as musical performance, music making, and/or habitual listening. The second experiment of this study consisted of 30 undergraduate students. Materials The first experiment utilized 10 positive five-chord progressions, and 10 negative fivechord progressions. The chord progressions were selected based on beauty ratings collected from an online survey ( The experimental condition used the 20 five-chord progressions as primes (Muller, Klein, & Jacobsen, 2011), while the control condition only used the fifth chord of each progression as its priming stimulus (Sollberger, Reber, & Eckstein, 2003). The present study also utilized 40 positive valenced words (e.g. love, peace, beauty) and 40 negatively valenced words (e.g. hate, disgust, grievance); these were taken from a previous article on auditory affective priming (Steinbeis & Koelsch, 2010). The experiment was constructed and administered using PsychoPy (Peirce, 2009). The second experiment used the

4 MUSIC AND AUDITORY AFFECTIVE PRIMING ON COGNITION 4 same stimuli and design as the first experiment, except the control condition used silence and 5- chord progressions of the same chord instead of single positive and negative chords. Procedure All of the participants were seated comfortably in a well-lit, minimal-distraction room in front of a computer screen; the experimental program slowly walked each of them through seven practice trials. Each trial consisted of a chord-word pairing; each word appeared on-screen 200 milliseconds (ms) after the onset of the final chord. Twenty pairings were pseudorandomized within each of the four blocks, which alternated between the experimental and control conditions. The auditory Affective Priming Paradigm predicted that congruent pairings of chord progressions and words would have faster RT than incongruent pairings when asked to categorize words based on valence. Participants were randomly assigned to one of 12 computers that exposed them to the control condition first or the experimental condition first, so that potential practice effects are controlled. Immediately following each of the four blocks of pairings, participants were given four minutes to write down as many of the 20 words from each respective list as possible. The second experiment investigated varying degrees of emotional arousal and pitch expectations by utilizing a multi-level control condition. The control stimuli used for the second experiment consisted of an equal number of silent and 5-same-chord progression trials (n = 20). The second experiment utilized the same experimental procedure and instructions as the first experiment. Results The first hypothesis anticipated that RT, measured in ms, would be significantly faster for the experimental condition. A 2 x 2 (Condition [control, experimental] x Congruence [incongruent, congruent]) repeated measures ANOVA was conducted using α =.05. Both the condition, F(1, 39) = , MSE = 0.007, p =.001, ƞ 2 =.16, and congruence, F(1, 39) = 7.233, MSE = 0.002, p =.010, ƞ 2 =.02, main effects were significant. The experimental condition (M =

5 MUSIC AND AUDITORY AFFECTIVE PRIMING ON COGNITION ms, SE =.028 ms) produced faster RT than the control condition (M = ms, SE =.033 ms), as did congruent pairings (M = ms, SE =.030 ms) over incongruent pairings (M = ms, SE =.030 ms). The hypothesis that beautiful-chord and positive-word pairings would produce the fastest RT in the experimental condition was examined with a 2 x 2 (Chord [beautiful, not-beautiful] x Word Valence [positive, negative]) repeated measures ANOVA. The Chord x Word Valence interaction reached significance, F(1, 39) = 3.982, MSE = 0.003, p =.053, ƞ 2 =.02. Beautifulchords paired with positive-words (M = ms, SE =.031 ms) produced the fastest RT of the four possible levels. The final hypothesis predicted that the level with the fastest RT would have the highest recall score. Another 2 x 2 (Chord [beautiful, not-beautiful] x Word Valence [positive, negative]) repeated measures ANOVA confirmed that words of the congruent beautiful-chord level were recalled the most (M = 5.050, SE =.232). The interaction effect for chord and word, F(1, 39) = 5.144, MSE = 2.571, p <.001, ƞ 2 =.04, was significant and the main effect for word valence was not significant. The main effect for chord, F(1, 39) = , MSE = 2.413, p <.001, ƞ 2 =.14, was significant; this was an unanticipated, but interesting, finding. Positive chords (M = 4.713, SE = 0.208) produced a higher recall score than negative chords (M = 3.613, SE = 0.175). The RM ANCOVA, which utilized the mean-centered RT for each participant as a covariate to control for the potential effects of latency, and the RM MANOVA were both non-significant. In the second experiment, the RT analysis comparing the 4 prime levels was significant; F(3, 69) = 7.096, p <.001, ƞ 2 =.30. The analysis of the recall score was significant, as well; F(3, 69) = , p <.001, ƞ 2 =.10. Discussion The results of the repeated measures ANOVA on recall scores revealed a significant main effect for chord, suggesting that positive chord progressions facilitated recall; this may be due to

6 MUSIC AND AUDITORY AFFECTIVE PRIMING ON COGNITION 6 melodic expectations or arousal. Due to a non-significant main effect of word, the results suggest that valence does not support memory independent of arousal, which is consistent with previous research (Mather & Sutherland, 2009). The results of the latency analyses support the existence of the auditory Affective Priming Paradigm, as RT was significantly faster for the experimental condition when compared to the control condition and when comparing congruent pairings, chord and word, to incongruent pairings. Processing speed was also shown to be faster for primes with high pitch expectations, in comparison to silence and primes with low pitch expectations; corroborating with the findings of Tillman and Marmel (2013). The pitch expectations formed by listeners in response to music, may influence the emotional arousal experienced (Van den Bosch et al. 2013). Recall scores appear to be high for the silent condition (Choi et al., 2014); however recall scores for words paired with positive primes were slightly higher, suggesting that arousal may be affecting memory performance (Nairne, 2010). Emotional arousal to the musical stimuli used in this study is an important factor that can be investigated with skin conductance response (SCR; Khalfa, Isabelle, Jean-Pierre, & Manon, 2002); this is a useful physiological indicator that will be included in future studies. The proposed priming model may reveal an influence of music on cognitive abilities because learning exists for pitch expectations, which are influenced by the retention of musical style, culture, training, development, and familiarity (Pearce & Wiggins, 2012). Academically, the researcher is hoping to modify the current theory on cognition as it relates to music. The practical implications of the findings may prove useful in attempts to raise awareness about the importance of music in every child s life and to restore music programs in America s public schools; thereby, adding to the growing body of literature substantiating music s positive effects on children.

7 MUSIC AND AUDITORY AFFECTIVE PRIMING ON COGNITION 7 References Adelman, J.S., & Estes, Z. (2013). Emotion and memory: A recognition advantage for positive and negative words independent of arousal. Cognition, 129, doi: /j.cognition Buchanan, T. W. (2007). Retrieval of emotional memories. Psychological Bulletin, 133, Choi, M., Min, Y., Kim, H., Kim, J., Yeon, H., Choi, J., Kim, B., Min, B., Park, J., Jun, J., Yi, J. Tack, G., & Chung, S. (2014). Effects of three levels of arousal on 3-back working memory task performance. Cognitive Neuroscience, 4(1), 1-6. Doerksen, S., & Shimamura, A. P. (2001). Source memory enhancement for emotional words. Emotion, 1, Estes, Z., & Adelman, J. S. (2008). Automatic vigilance for negative words in lexical decision and naming: Comment on Larsen, Mercer, and Balota (2006). Emotion, 8, Hill, B., Elliott, E., Shelton, J., Pella, R., O Jile, J., & Gouvier, W. (2010). Can we improve the clinical assessment of working memory? An evaluation of the WAIS-III using a working memory criterion construct. Journal of Clinical Experimental Neuropsychology, 32(2), doi: / Ignacio, D. (2013). Musical beauty. Retrieved from Kensinger, E. A. (2009). Remembering the details: Effects of emotion. Emotion Review, 1, Khalfa, S., Isabelle, P., Jean-Pierre, B., & Manon, R. (2002). Event-related skin conductance responses to musical emotions in humans. Neuroscience Letters, 328, doi: /02/$

8 MUSIC AND AUDITORY AFFECTIVE PRIMING ON COGNITION 8 LaBar, K. S., & Phelps, E. A. (1998). Arousal-mediated memory consolidation: Role of the medial temporal lobe in humans. Psychological Science, 9, Mather, M., & Sutherland, M. (2009). Disentangling the effects of arousal and valence on memory for intrinsic details. Emotion Review, 1, Muller, M. (2011). BrainTuning in Leipzig. Retrieved from Muller, M., Klein, J., & Jacobsen, T. (2011). Beyond demand: Investigating spontaneous evaluation of chord progressions with the affective priming paradigm. Music Perception, 29(1), Pearce, M. T., & Wiggins, G. A. (2012). Auditory expectation: The information dynamics of music perception and cognition. Topics in Cognitive Science, 4, Peirce, J. W. (2009). Generating stimuli for neuroscience using PsychoPy. Front. Neuroinform, 2(10). doi: /neuro Salimpoor, V. N., Benovoy, M., Larcher, K., Dagher, A., & Zatorre, R. J. (2011). Anatomically distinct dopamine release during anticipation and experience of peak emotion to music. Nature Neuroscience, 14(2), Shohamy, D., & Adcock, R. A. (2010). Dopamine and adaptive memory. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 14(10), Sollberger, B., Reber, R., & Eckstein, D. (2003). Musical chords as affective priming context in a word-evaluation task. Music Perception, 20(3), Steinbeis, N., & Koelsch, S. (2010). Affective priming effects of musical sounds on the processing of word meaning. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 23(3),

9 MUSIC AND AUDITORY AFFECTIVE PRIMING ON COGNITION 9 Tillman, B., & Marmel, F. (2013). Musical expectations within chord sequences: Facilitation due to tonal stability without closure effects. Psychomusicology: Music, Mind, and Brain, 23(1), 1-5. Van Den Bosch, I., Salimpoor, V.N., & Zatorre, R.J. (2013). Familiarity mediates the relationship between emotional arousal and pleasure during music listening. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 7, 1-10.