Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2brh9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T17:06:05.477Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Felt Emotion Elicited by Music: Are Sensitivities to Various Musical Features Different for Young Children and Young Adults?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 May 2020

Xuqian Chen Open the ORCID record for Xuqian Chen [Opens in a new window] ,
Shengqiao Huang ,
Xueting Hei  and
Hongyuan Zeng
Xuqian Chen*
Affiliation:
South China Normal University (China) Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Cognitive Science of Guangdong Province (China)
Shengqiao Huang
Affiliation:
South China Normal University (China) Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Cognitive Science of Guangdong Province (China)
Xueting Hei
Affiliation:
South China Normal University (China) Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Cognitive Science of Guangdong Province (China)
Hongyuan Zeng
Affiliation:
Department of Education, Jiangmen Polytechnic (China)
*
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Xuqian Chen. School of Psychology, Center for Studies of Psychological Application, South China Normal University. 510631 Guangzhou (China). Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In the present study, we extended the issue of how people access emotion through nonverbal information by testing the effects of simple (tempo) and complex (timbre) acoustic features of music on felt emotion. Three- to six-year-old young children (n = 100; 48% female) and university students (n = 64; 37.5% female) took part in three experiments in which acoustic features of music were manipulated to determine whether there are links between perceived emotion and felt emotion in processing musical segments. After exposure to segments of music, participants completed a felt emotion judgment task. The chi-square test showed significant tempo effects, ps < .001 (Exp. 1), and strong combined effects of mode and tempo on felt emotion. In addition, strength of these effects changed across age. However, these combined effects were significantly stronger under the tempo-and-mode consistent condition, ps < .001 (Exp. 2) than inconsistent condition (Exp. 3). In other words, simple versus complex acoustic features had stronger effects on felt emotion, and that sensitivity to these features, especially complex features, changed across age. These findings suggest that felt emotion evoked by acoustic features of a given piece of music might be affected by both innate abilities and by the strength of mappings between acoustic features and emotion.

Keywords

acoustic featuresfelt emotionmodetempotimbre
Type
Research Article
Information
The Spanish Journal of Psychology , Volume 23 , 2020 , e8
Copyright
© Universidad Complutense de Madrid and Colegio Oficial de Psicólogos de Madrid 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

This project was supported by the China Scholarship Council (No. 201906755010), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 31970983) and the Planned project of Philosophy and Social Science in Jiangmen, 2017 (No. JM2017B12).

References

Andrews, M. W., Dowling, W. J., Bartlett, J. C., & Halpern, A. R. (1998). Identification of speeded and slowed familiar melodies by younger, middle-aged, and older musicians and nonmusicians. Psychology & Aging, 13, 462–471. https://doi.org/10.1037/0882-7974.13.3.462CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Balkwill, L.-L., & Thompson, W. F. (1999). A cross-cultural investigation of the perception of emotion in music: Psychophysical and cultural cues. Music Perception, 17(1), 43–64. http://doi.org/10.2307/40285811CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bowman, C., & Yamauchi, T. (2016). Perceiving categorical emotion in sound: The role of timbre. Psychomusicology: Music, Mind, and Brain, 26(1), 15–25. http://doi.org/10.1037/pmu0000105CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bresin, R., & Friberg, A. (2011). Emotion rendering in music: Range and characteristic values of seven musical variables. Cortex, 47, 1068–1081. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2011.05.009CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Chen, X., Liu, B., & Lin, S. (2016). Is accessing of words affected by affective valence only? A discrete emotion view on the emotional congruency effect. Frontiers in Psychology, 7, Article 916. http://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00916CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chen, X., Wang, G., & Liang, Y. (2016). The common element effect of abstract-to-abstract mapping in language processing. Frontiers in Psychology, 7, Article 1623. http://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01623CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cunningham, J. G., & Sterling, R. S. (1988). Developmental change in the understanding of affective meaning in music. Motivation and Emotion, 12(4), 399–414. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00992362CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dalla Bella, S., Peretz, I., Rousseau, L., & Gosselin, N. (2001). A developmental study of the affective value of tempo and mode in music. Cognition, 80, B1–B10. http://doi.org/10.1016/S0010-0277(00)00136-0CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Deliens, G. t., Antoniou, K., Clin, E., Ostashchenko, E., & Kissine, M. (2018). Context, facial expression and prosody in irony processing. Journal of Memory and Language, 99, 35–48. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2017.10.001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dolgin, K. G., & Adelson, E. H. (1990). Age changes in the ability to interpret affect in sung and instrumentally-presented melodies. Psychology of Music, 18, 87–98. https://doi.org/10.1177/0305735690181007CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dowling, W. J., Bartlett, J. C., Halpern, A. R., & Andrews, W. M. (2008). Melody recognition at fast and slow tempos: Effects of age, experience, and familiarity. Perception & Psychophysics, 70, 496–502. https://doi.org/10.3758/pp.70.3.496CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gabrielsson, A. (2001). Emotions in strong experiences with music. In Juslin, P. N. & Sloboda, J. A. (Eds.), Music and emotion: Theory and research (pp. 431–449). Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Gabrielsson, A. (2002). Emotion perceived and emotion felt: Same or different? Musicae Scientiae, 5(1), 123–147. http://doi.org/10.1177/102986490601000203CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gabrielsson, A., & Lindström, E. (2010). The role of structure in the musical expression of emotions. In Juslin, P. N. & Sloboda, J. A. (Eds.), Handbook of music and emotion: Theory, research, applications (pp. 367–400). Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Garardi, G. M., & Gerken, L. (1995). The development of affective response to modality and melodic contour. Music Perception, 12, 279–290. https://doi.org/10.2307/40286184CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gregory, A., Worral, L., & Sarge, A. (1996). The development of emotional responses to music in young children. Motivation and Emotion, 20, 341–349. http://doi.org/10.1007/BF02856522CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hailstone, J. C., Omar, R., Henley, S. M. D., Frost, C., Kenward, M. G., & Warren, J. D. (2006). It’s not what you play, it’s how you play it: Timbre affects perception of emotion in music. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 62(11), 2141–2155. http://doi.org/10.1080/17470210902765957CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Husain, G., Thompson, W. F., & Schellenberg, E. G. (2002). Effects of musical tempo and mode on arousal, mood, and spatial abilities. Music Perception, 20, 151–171. http://doi.org/10.1525/mp.2002.20.2.151CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Isaac, A. M. C. (2018). Prospects for timbre physicalism. Philosophical Studies, 175, 503–529. http://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-017-0880-yCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Juslin, P. N., & Laukka, P. (2003). Communication of emotions in vocal expression and music performance: Different channels, same code. Psychological Bulletin, 129(5), 770–814. http://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.129.5.770CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Juslin, P. N., & Sloboda, J. A. (2013). 15. Music and Emotion. In Deutsch, D. (Ed.), The psychology of music (3rd Ed., pp. 583–645). Academic Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kastner, M. P., & Crowder, R. G. (1990). Perception of the major/minor distinction: IV. Emotional connotations in young children. Music Perception, 8, 189–202. http://doi.org/10.2307/40285496CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kawakami, A., Furukawa, K., Katahira, K., Kamiyama, K., & Okanoya, K. (2013). Relations between musical structures and perceived and felt emotion. Music Perception: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 30(4), 407–417. http://doi.org/10.1525/MP.2013.30.4.407CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kousta, S.-T., Vigliocco, G., Vinson, D. P., Andrews, M., & Del Campo, E. (2011). The representation of abstract words: Why emotion matters. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 140(1), 14–34. http://doi.org/10.1037/a0021446CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kousta, S.-T., Vinson, D. P., & Vigliocco, G. (2009). Emotion words, regardless of polarity, have a processing advantage over neutral words. Cognition, 112(3), 473–481. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2009.06.007CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kraus, N., Skoe, E., Parbery-Clark, A., & Ashley, R. (2009). Experience-induced malleability in neural encoding of pitch, timbre, and timing implications for language and music. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences , 1169, 543–557. http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-6632.2009.04549.xCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Krumhansl, C. L. (2002). Music: A link between cognition and emotion. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 11, 45–50. http://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8721.00165CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Laukka, P., Eerola, T., Thingujam, N. S., Yamasaki, T., Beller, G., Laukka, P., Eerola, T., Thingujam, N. S., Yamasaki, T., & Beller, G. (2013). Universal and culture-specific factors in the recognition and performance of musical affect expressions. Emotion, 13(3), 434–449. http://doi.org/10.1037/a0031388CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Livingstone, S. R., Mühlberger, R., Brown, A. R., & Loch, A. (2007). Controlling musical emotionality: An affective computational architecture for influencing musical emotions. Digital Creativity, 18(1), 43–53. http://doi.org/10.1080/14626260701253606CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lundqvist, L.-O., Carlsson, F., Hilmersson, P., & Juslin, P. N. (2009). Emotional responses to music: experience, expression, and physiology. Psychology of Music, 37, 61–90. http://doi.org/10.1177/0305735607086048CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nantais, K. M., & Schellenberg, E. G. (1999). The Mozart effect: An artifact of preference. Psychological Science, 10, 370–373. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9280.00170CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nawrot, E. S. (2003). The perception of emotional expression in music: Evidence from infants, children and adults. Psychology of Music, 31(1), 75–92. http://doi.org/10.1177/0305735603031001325CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pell, M. D. (2005). Nonverbal emotion priming: Evidence from the "facial affect decision task". Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 29(1), 45–73. http://doi.org/10.1007/s10919-004-0889-8CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schellenberg, E. G., & Trehub, S. E. (1996). Natural musical intervals: Evidence from infant listeners. Psychological Science, 7(5), 272–277. http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.1996.tb00373.xCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Webster, G. D., & Weir, C. G. (2005). Emotional responses to music: Interactive effects of mode, texture, and tempo. Motivation and Emotion, 29(1), 19–39. http://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-005-4414-0CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zentner, M., Granjean, D., & Scherer, K. R. (2008). Emotions evoked by the sound of music: Characterization, classification, and measurement. Emotion, 8(4), 494–521. http://doi.org/10.1037/1528-3542.8.4.494CrossRefGoogle Scholar