Music, Attention, Affect

1
Music, Attention, Affect

• Background music
• Expectations about future outcomes
• Enhance/reduce affective impact of activities
• Affective reactions
• Cognitive processing activities
• Memory recall

2
Music and Activity

• Foreshadowing or accompanying
• Congruent or incongruent
• Expectation of events
• Memory of events
• Commonly used in film, theatre, opera, etc.

3
Effectiveness

• Thayer Levenson (1983)
• Background music and behavioural effect
• Monitored physiological (GSR) reaction
• Film on industrial accident
• Relaxing documentary or horror music
• Higher physiological arousal with horror music
• Music alters degree of internal arousal

4
Effectiveness

• Marshall Cohen (1988)
• Film of moving geometric figures (2 triangles
  circle)
• Personality traits associated with figures
  (Heider Simmel, 1944)
• Affective impressions of figures changed with
  background music
• e.g., large triangle more agitated and
  aggressive with louder, more active music
  smaller triangle more salient with weak music
• Mood dimensions of music direct viewers
  attention to figures activity levels

5
Boltz, Schulkind Kantra (1991)

• Background music and film scenes
• Music either
• Accompanied scenes outcome
• Accentuated affective meaning
• Foreshadowed the scene
• Created expectations about future course of
  events
• Congruent or incongruent with events of scene

6
Memory Recall

• Expectancy violations from mood-incongruent
  relations --gt better recall in foreshadowing
  condition
• Mood-congruent relations --gt better recall in
  accompanying condition
• Selective-attending processes

7
Memory Assistance

• Scenes not recalled on recognition task
• Details recalled when cued by background music

8
Perceptual Processing

• Pre-attentive processing
• Break perceptual input into units
• Direct attention to relevant stimuli
• Gestalt psychology
• Applicable to audiovisual objects
• Music paired with visuals

9
Music in Commercials

• Contextualizing element
• Interpret images in ways consistent with music
• Help organize complex imagery
• Extract salient details from background noise

10
Teaser Ads

• Television ads
• Highly visual
• Limited explanatory content
• Rely on imagery to induce attitude to brand
• Mickey-mousing
• Film scoring technique
• Visual action mirrored/paired with auditory track

11
Hung (2001)

• 30 sec. TV ad for upscale Singapore shopping mall
  (Raffles)
• Attractive young men women, formal dress, in
  studio settings
• Paired with one of two music tracks
• Vivaldis LAmoroso in E-major or Garbages
  Supervixen

12
Results

• Music produced differences in affective state
• Questionnaires for image and emotion scale
• Vivaldi
• Successful, imaginative, calm
• Garbage
• Daring, annoying, boring
• Music affects meaning perceptions

13
Focus Group Discussion

• Raffles-Vivaldi
• Upscale exclusive darker designer boutiques
• Raffles-Garbage
• Youth, in mall for 20-30 year olds brighter
• Music tempo
• Same for Vivaldi and Garbage
• But Garbage perceived to be faster
• Carried over to RG commercial scene cuts
  perceived as quicker

14
Knowledge Attribution

• Vivaldi Baroque, Garbage Brit pop
• Attributions ascribed to Vivaldi due to music, or
  subjects (18-22 year olds) conditioned
  expectations?
• e.g., Classical music old and stuffy
• Hung suggests two music selections should come
  from same genre