Emotional memory for musical excerpts in young and older adults

Abstract

The emotions evoked by music can enhance recognition of excerpts. It has been suggested that memory is better for high than for low arousing music (Eschrich et al., 2005; Samson et al., 2009), but it remains unclear whether positively (Eschrich et al., 2008) or negatively valenced music (Aubé et al., 2013; Vieillard and Gilet, 2013) may be better recognized. Moreover, we still know very little about the influence of age on emotional memory for music. To address these issues, we tested emotional memory for music in young and older adults using musical excerpts varying in terms of arousal and valence. Participants completed immediate and 24 h delayed recognition tests. We predicted highly arousing excerpts to be better recognized by both groups in immediate recognition. We hypothesized that arousal may compensate consolidation deficits in aging, thus showing more prominent benefit of high over low arousing stimuli in older than younger adults on delayed recognition. We also hypothesized worst retention of negative excerpts for the older group, resulting in a recognition benefit for positive over negative excerpts specific to older adults. Our results suggest that although older adults had worse recognition than young adults overall, effects of emotion on memory do not seem to be modified by aging. Results on immediate recognition suggest that recognition of low arousing excerpts can be affected by valence, with better memory for positive relative to negative low arousing music. However, 24 h delayed recognition results demonstrate effects of emotion on memory consolidation regardless of age, with a recognition benefit for high arousal and for negatively valenced music. The present study highlights the role of emotion on memory consolidation. Findings are examined in light of the literature on emotional memory for music and for other stimuli. We finally discuss the implication of the present results for potential music interventions in aging and dementia.

The Impact of Emotion on Musical Long-Term Memory

“…Thus, the memory performance for stimuli associated with positive valence was not only higher than for negative ones, but also improved after a 24-h delay, which was not the case for the negative stimuli. The fact that emotional enhancement on musical memory varies as a function of study-test delay intervals confirmed our predictions and is compatible with previously reported results ( Alonso et al, 2015 ). It suggests that post-encoding processes, including consolidation that transforms newly formed memories from a fragile state to a more permanent state, modulated the effects of emotion upon musical memory.…”

“…The musical material consisted of 32 symphonic excerpts with a duration of 5 s (±1-s fade and in fade out) already used in a previous study ( Alonso et al, 2015 ). These excerpts were taken from different symphonies written by composers between 1830 and 1954 and were normalized to a maximal amplitude of 1.2 dB.…”

“…We selected 16 target stimuli (four per emotional combination) and 16 distractors for the recognition test. Thus, to each target was matched to a distractor from the same emotional combination and melodic style, composed by the same composer or even excerpts from the same symphony as the target (the list of the symphonies is presented in Alonso et al, 2015 ).…”

“…Prior investigations into emotional memory in music have assessed memory at only one delay. To our knowledge, in the music domain, only one study has examined the effects of delay interval upon emotional memory ( Alonso et al, 2015 ). Making use of the parsimonious model of emotion, which defines emotional spectrum into two dimensions, its authors manipulated valence and arousal levels in symphonic musical excerpts.…”

“…To overcome this methodological limit and to clarify the ways emotional dimensions (i.e., valence and arousal) affect musical memory as study-test delay intervals increase, we designed a new study using the symphonic musical excerpts selected by Alonso et al (2015) . However, we manipulated the study-test interval while keeping the number of exposures constant.…”