Influence of Background Musical Emotions on Attention in Congenital Amusia

Abstract

Congenital amusia in its most common form is a disorder characterized by a musical pitch processing deficit. Although pitch is involved in conveying emotion in music, the implications for pitch deficits on musical emotion judgements is still under debate. Relatedly, both limited and spared musical emotion recognition was reported in amusia in conditions where emotion cues were not determined by musical mode or dissonance. Additionally, assumed links between musical abilities and visuo-spatial attention processes need further investigation in congenital amusics. Hence, we here test to what extent musical emotions can influence attentional performance. Fifteen congenital amusic adults and fifteen healthy controls matched for age and education were assessed in three attentional conditions: executive control (distractor inhibition), alerting, and orienting (spatial shift) while music expressing either joy, tenderness, sadness, or tension was presented. Visual target detection was in the normal range for both accuracy and response times in the amusic relative to the control participants. Moreover, in both groups, music exposure produced facilitating effects on selective attention that appeared to be driven by the arousal dimension of musical emotional content, with faster correct target detection during joyful compared to sad music. These findings corroborate the idea that pitch processing deficits related to congenital amusia do not impede other cognitive domains, particularly visual attention. Furthermore, our study uncovers an intact influence of music and its emotional content on the attentional abilities of amusic individuals. The results highlight the domain-selectivity of the pitch disorder in congenital amusia, which largely spares the development of visual attention and affective systems.

Effects of Affectively Parameterized Music on Mood and Attention

“…Importantly, as it is the case for affect, the effects of WorkFlow music on attention were not dependent on basal psychological distress (e.g., participants with moderate and severe anxiety still showed faster RTs to targets over time; see Figure 9B). These results are consistent with research showing that listening to music has a beneficial effect in executive functions (Fernandez et al, 2019;Fernandez et al, 2020;Fernandez et al, 2021;Shih et al, 2016;Jiang et al, 2011;Kämpfe et al, 2010;Thompson et al, 2005). The effect of listening to WorkFlow music on attention was found in RTs to targets regardless of Flanker condition (Neutral, Congruent, Incongruent).…”

“…After approximately one minute, the Flanker task was initiated. The Flanker task is one of the most widely used measures of attention (Eriksen and Eriksen, 1974;Sanders et al, 2002), and of particular relevance here, it has been specifically used to study the effect of background music on attention (Cloutier et al, 2020;Rowe et al, 2007;Fernandez et al, 2019;Fernandez et al, 2020;Fernandez et al, 2021). Participants were presented with probe stimuli consisting of a centrally presented right-or left-pointing arrow flanked by either congruent arrows (Congruent condition), incongruent arrows (Incongruent condition), squares (Neutral condition), or crosses (No-Go condition).…”

“…On the one hand, there is increasing evidence that music can enhance memory via reward-related mechanisms (Ferreri and Verga, 2016;Ferreri et al, 2013Ferreri et al, , 2017Ferreri et al, , 2021Cardona et al, 2020). On the other hand, the effects of music on attention are far less clear, with equivocal evidence for enhancement, impairment, and absence of effect in both clinical and healthy populations (see Kämpfe et al, 2010;Kussner, 2017;Cloutier et al, 2020;Kiss et al, 2021;Davies et al, 1973;Särkämo et al, 2008Särkämo et al, , 2014Fernandez et al, 2019;Fernandez et al, 2020;Fernandez et al, 2021). Understanding how music modulates attention is critical since, in contrast to other wellness practices such as exercise and meditation, people often use music while engaged in other tasks (e.g., working, studying, cooking, operating heavy machinery, etc.…”

The effect of emotional arousal on visual attentional performance: a systematic review

“…There were seven studies where task-irrelevant emotional stimuli were presented during the task (Fernandez et al, 2021 ; Heim & Keil, 2019 ; Murphy et al, 2010 ; Schimmack, 2005 ; Schupp et al, 2007 ; Zsido et al, 2018 , Zsidó et al, 2022 ). These studies were diverse regarding both the task (ANT, solving arithmetic operations, matching, target counting, and visual search) and the type of stimuli (classical music, sounds, and pictures) they used.…”

The Neuroscience of Emotion Elicitation by Music

“…Congenital amusia appears to have little overlap with other neurological disorders, such as those affecting attention or emotion. Thus, participants with a pitch-based amusia were found to judge the emotions in music to be less intense, but they categorized the emotions expressed in the music in largely the same manner as did control participants (Fernandez et al, 2021).…”