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Music-induced positive mood broadens the scope of auditory attention

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

Music-induced positive mood broadens the scope of auditory attention Thumbnail


Authors

V. Putkinen

T. Makkonen



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 Mar 28, 2024
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

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Published Journal Article (Advance online version) (2.2 Mb)
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Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

Copyright Statement
Advance online version © The Author (2017). Published by Oxford University Press.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/
licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
For commercial re-use, please contact journals.permissions@oup.com





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