Changes in the Perception and the Psychological Structure of Musical Emotions with Advancing Age

Vieillard, Sandrine; Didierjean, André; Maquestiaux, François

doi:10.1080/0361073x.2012.699371

Cited by 22 publications

(36 citation statements)

References 31 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…The analysis of the arousal emotional judgment confirmed that arousal ratings correctly reflected arousal differences in the stimuli. Although it has been reported that age can affect the arousal rating of music (Vieillard et al, 2012), no different ratings for arousal were found between age groups for the present stimuli set. Conversely, the analysis on valence ratings showed an interaction between valence and aging, suggesting that older adults rated positive excerpts less positive and negative excerpts less negative than young adults.…”

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 71%

Emotional memory for musical excerpts in young and older adults

Alonso

Dellacherie

Samson

2015

Front. Aging Neurosci.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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.

show abstract

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 71%

Emotional memory for musical excerpts in young and older adults

Alonso

Dellacherie

Samson

2015

Front. Aging Neurosci.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Based on previous findings (Grühn & Scheibe, 2008;Keil & Freund, 2009;Mather et al, 2004;Vieillard, Didierjean, et al, 2012), and in line with the hypothesis that a reduction of emotional complexity (e.g., emotional dedifferentiation) may emerge as a cognitive counterpart of older adults' attempt to reduce negativity and maximize positivity, we expected that older adults would show a stronger association between the Emotional Activation and Hedonic Feeling ratings than their younger counterparts. Regarding the target identification task, the motivational perspective of SST postulates that older adults should preferentially direct attention towards positive stimuli and away from negative stimuli.…”

Section: Please Scroll Down For Articlementioning

confidence: 85%

“…To date, this phenomenon has been demonstrated in both the visual (Grühn & Scheibe, 2008) and the auditory (Vieillard, Didierjean, & Maquestiaux, 2012) domains but has been limited to perceived emotions. This leaves open the question of whether emotional dedifferentiation exists when emotions are experienced.…”

Section: Please Scroll Down For Articlementioning

confidence: 94%

Distinct effects of positive and negative music on older adults’ auditory target identification performances

Vieillard

Bigand

2014

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Older adults, compared to younger adults, are more likely to attend to pleasant situations and avoid unpleasant ones. Yet, it is unclear whether such a phenomenon may be generalized to musical emotions. In this study, we investigated whether there is an age-related difference in how musical emotions are experienced and how positive and negative music influences attention performances in a target identification task. Thirty-one young and twenty-eight older adults were presented with 40 musical excerpts conveying happiness, peacefulness, sadness, and threat. While listening to music, participants were asked to rate their feelings and monitor each excerpt for the occurrence of an auditory target. Compared to younger adults, older adults reported experiencing weaker emotional activation when listening to threatening music and showed higher level of liking for happy music. Correct reaction times (RTs) for target identification were longer for threatening than for happy music in older adults but not in younger adults. This suggests that older adults benefit from a positive musical context and can regulate emotion elicited by negative music by decreasing attention towards it (and therefore towards the auditory target).

show abstract

“…Furthermore, in the future it may be insightful to complement ratings of specific emotions with ratings of broader affective dimensions, specifically arousal and valence. Vieillard et al (2012) observed that older adults did not perceive arousal and valence in the same way younger participants did, and that they also did not use these properties as cues to group music excerpts in an implicit free emotion categorization task.…”

Section: Aging and Emotion Recognition In Musicmentioning

confidence: 94%

Age and Musical Expertise Influence Emotion Recognition in Music

Castro

Lima

2014

Music Perception

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

WE INVESTIGATED HOW AGE AND MUSICAL EXPERTISE influence emotion recognition in music. Musically trained and untrained participants from two age cohorts, young and middle-aged adults (N ¼ 80), were presented with music excerpts expressing happiness, peacefulness, sadness, and fear/threat. Participants rated how much each excerpt expressed the four emotions on 10-point scales. The intended emotions were consistently perceived, but responses varied across groups. Advancing age was associated with selective decrements in the recognition of sadness and fear/threat, a finding consistent with previous research (Lima & Castro, 2011a); the recognition of happiness and peacefulness remained stable. Years of music training were associated with enhanced recognition accuracy. These effects were independent of domain-general cognitive abilities and personality traits, but they were echoed in differences in how efficiently music structural cues (e.g., tempo, mode) were relied upon. Thus, age and musical expertise are experiential factors explaining individual variability in emotion recognition in music.

show abstract

Changes in the Perception and the Psychological Structure of Musical Emotions with Advancing Age

Abstract: Altogether, these data are consistent with the view that advancing age may result in the reduction of emotional complexity and a distortion of the emotional processing in a positive direction.

Cited by 22 publications

References 31 publications

Emotional memory for musical excerpts in young and older adults

Emotional memory for musical excerpts in young and older adults

Distinct effects of positive and negative music on older adults’ auditory target identification performances

Age and Musical Expertise Influence Emotion Recognition in Music

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About