文章基本信息

标题：The effect of background music on episodic memory and autonomic responses: listening to emotionally touching music enhances facial memory capacity
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作者：C.A. Alice Mado Proverbio ; Valentina Lozano Nasi ; Laura Alessandra Arcari 等
期刊名称：Scientific Reports
电子版ISSN：2045-2322
出版年度：2015
卷号：5
DOI：10.1038/srep15219
出版社：Springer Nature
摘要：The aim of this study was to investigate how background auditory processing can affect other perceptual and cognitive processes as a function of stimulus content, style and emotional nature. Previous studies have offered contrasting evidence, and it has been recently shown that listening to music negatively affected concurrent mental processing in the elderly but not in young adults. To further investigate this matter, the effect of listening to music vs. listening to the sound of rain or silence was examined by administering an old/new face memory task (involving 448 unknown faces) to a group of 54 non-musician university students. Heart rate and diastolic and systolic blood pressure were measured during an explicit face study session that was followed by a memory test. The results indicated that more efficient and faster recall of faces occurred under conditions of silence or when participants were listening to emotionally touching music. Whereas auditory background (e.g., rain or joyful music) interfered with memory encoding, listening to emotionally touching music improved memory and significantly increased heart rate. It is hypothesized that touching music is able to modify the visual perception of faces by binding facial properties with auditory and emotionally charged information (music), which may therefore result in deeper memory encoding.