Happy and sad music acutely modulate different types of attention in older adults

Abstract

Of the three subtypes of attention outlined by the attentional subsystems model, alerting (vigilance or arousal needed for task completion) and executive control (the ability to inhibit distracting information while completing a goal) are susceptible to age-related decline, while orienting remains relatively stable. Yet, few studies have investigated strategies that may acutely maintain or promote attention in typically aging older adults. Music listening may be one potential strategy for attentional maintenance as past research shows that listening to happy music characterized by a fast tempo and major mode increases cognitive task performance, likely by increasing cognitive arousal. The present study sought to investigate whether listening to happy music (fast tempo, major mode) impacts alerting, orienting, and executive control attention in 57 middle and older-aged adults (M = 61.09 years, SD = 7.16). Participants completed the Attention Network Test (ANT) before and after listening to music rated as happy or sad (slow tempo, minor mode), or no music (i.e., silence) for 10 min. Our results demonstrate that happy music increased alerting attention, particularly when relevant and irrelevant information conflicted within a trial. Contrary to what was predicted, sad music modulated executive control performance. Overall, our findings indicate that music written in the major mode with a fast tempo (happy) and minor mode with a slow tempo (sad) modulate different aspects of attention in the short-term.

Enhancing tonic arousal improves voluntary but not involuntary attention in humans

“…This result suggests that the effect of voluntary orienting of auditory attention is increased under high tonic arousal, with more anticipation enabling a faster response to the target sound. In the visual modality, inconsistent results were found with improved 41 or unchanged 43,65 attention orienting with increasing tonic arousal. Moreover, the decreased variability in reaction times under high arousing music conditions suggests improved sustained attention capacities.…”

“…Tonic arousal modulations are achieved using a wide range of methodologies: pharmacological manipulations 34 , stress induction 35 , meditation 36 , isometric exercise 37 or background music presentation 38–40 . In addition, some behavioral studies have used pre-task music to induce tonic arousal modulation, with varying type and duration of music extracts 41,42 . Because arousal level in human cannot be assessed directly by measuring the activity of neurons within the LC, most studies have relied on subjective ratings of the subject arousal state 43 or on indirect physiological markers such as heart rate or salivatory cortisol levels 35 .…”

Preferred music listening does not affect cognitive inhibition in young and older adults.

“…For the mood and arousal hypothesis, any stimulus that increases mood and arousal, in this case preferred music, should boost short-term cognitive performance (Schellenberg, 2005). However, most of the literature in this domain has participants listen to music before the task, which contrasts to how most people utilize music while working (i.e., during the task not before) (Dovorany et al, 2023; Vincenzi et al, 2022). Thus, the lack of difference in our results may be because we had participants listen to music during the task.…”

Investigating the ability of music to induce calm in young adults

“…However, it could be argued that the 28 participants were sufficient in number given the repeated measures design. Additionally, the exclusive use of young adults makes comparisons beyond this group fraught, especially as music preference (Davies et al, 2022; Dovorany et al, 2023) and the emotions elicited by music (Groark & Hogan, 2019) are linked to cohort and age.…”

“…This theory echoes the ‘ Undoing Hypothesis ’ (Fredrickson et al, 2000), which states that positive emotions facilitate the ‘undoing’ of sympathetic arousal and feelings of stress. At the cognitive level, the Attention Recovery Theory (ART) argues that natural soundscapes can facilitate both attentional processes and cognitive performance (Kaplan & Kaplan, 1989), with emerging evidence suggesting that music also possesses the ability to enhance cognition (Dovorany et al, 2023).…”