Music-induced positive mood broadens the scope of auditory attention

Putkinen, V.; Makkonen, T.; Eerola, T.

Abstract

Previous studies indicate that positive mood broadens the scope of visual attention, which can manifest as heightened distractibility. We used event-related potentials (ERP) to investigate whether music-induced positive mood has comparable effects on selective attention in the auditory domain. Subjects listened to experimenter-selected happy, neutral or sad in- strumental music and afterwards participated in a dichotic listening task. Distractor sounds in the unattended channel eli- cited responses related to early sound encoding (N1/MMN) and bottom-up attention capture (P3a) while target sounds in the attended channel elicited a response related to top-down-controlled processing of task-relevant stimuli (P3b). For the sub- jects in a happy mood, the N1/MMN responses to the distractor sounds were enlarged while the P3b elicited by the target sounds was diminished. Behaviorally, these subjects tended to show heightened error rates on target trials following the distractor sounds. Thus, the ERP and behavioral results indicate that the subjects in a happy mood allocated their atten- tional resources more diffusely across the attended and the to-be-ignored channels. Therefore, the current study extends previous research on the effects of mood on visual attention and indicates that even unfamiliar instrumental music can broaden the scope of auditory attention via its effects on mood.

Citation

Putkinen, V., Makkonen, T., & Eerola, T. (2017). Music-induced positive mood broadens the scope of auditory attention. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 12(7), 1159-1168. https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsx038

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Mar 15, 2017
• Online Publication Date: Apr 27, 2017
• Publication Date: Jan 1, 2017
• Deposit Date: Jun 12, 2017
• Publicly Available Date: Jun 14, 2017
• Journal: Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience
• Print ISSN: 1749-5016
• Electronic ISSN: 1749-5024
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 12
• Issue: 7
• Pages: 1159-1168
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsx038
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1357567