Differential Background Music as Attentional Resources Interacting with Cognitive Control

Ga Eul Yoo, Sujin Lee, Aimee Jeehae Kim, Seung Hong Choi, Hyun Ju Chong () and Sunghyouk Park ()
Additional contact information
Ga Eul Yoo: Department of Music Therapy, Graduate School, Ewha Womans University, Seoul 03760, Republic of Korea
Sujin Lee: Natural Product Research Institute, College of Pharmacy, Seoul National University, Seoul 08826, Republic of Korea
Aimee Jeehae Kim: Department of Musicology and Culture, Music Therapy Major, Graduate School, Dong-A University, Busan 49315, Republic of Korea
Seung Hong Choi: Department of Radiology, Seoul National University College of Medicine, Seoul 03080, Republic of Korea
Hyun Ju Chong: Department of Music Therapy, Graduate School, Ewha Womans University, Seoul 03760, Republic of Korea
Sunghyouk Park: Natural Product Research Institute, College of Pharmacy, Seoul National University, Seoul 08826, Republic of Korea

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 19, issue 22, 1-14

Abstract: We examined the effects of background music on cognitive task performances using different musical arrangements from an excerpt of Mozart’s Piano Sonata K.448. The participants were 126 university students: 70 music majors and 56 nonmusic majors. Three types of musical arrangements were used as background conditions: rhythm-only, melody, and original music conditions. Participants were asked to perform cognitive tasks in the presence of each music condition. The participants’ percentage of completed items and accuracy on these tasks were compared for music and nonmusic majors, controlling for the effect of perceived level of arousal and their performance during no background music. Whether a participant’s perceptions of background music predicted their cognitive performance was also analyzed. We found that music majors demonstrated decreased task performance for the original background condition, while nonmusic majors demonstrated no significant differences in performance across the arrangements. When pitch or rhythm information was modified, emotional valence and arousal were perceived differently. Perception of the complexity of the background music depending on the arrangement type differed between music majors and nonmusic majors. While the perceived complexity significantly predicted nonmusic majors’ cognitive performance, its predictive effect was not found in music majors. The findings imply that perceptions of musical arrangements in terms of expectancy and complexity can be critical factors in determining how arrangements affect concurrent cognitive activity, while suggesting that music itself is not a facilitating or detrimental factor for cognitive performance.

Keywords: background music; cognitive performance; attentional control; music majors (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/22/15094/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/22/15094/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:19:y:2022:i:22:p:15094-:d:974413

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().