Emotional Influences on Attention to Auditory Streams

Perception and experience of emotions are important elements of the appreciation and understanding of music. In fact, they may not only be a response to music, but may also play a directing role in our perception of music. The results of three experiments present corroborating evidence that this is indeed the case: Presentations of affective pictures influence the way participants attend to and group auditory sequences. The experiments used sequences consisting of alternating high and low notes. Participants indicated their perception of the sequences by judging to what extent they attended to the high or low sequence or to both lines (one stream). Happy pictures increased the tendency of participants to focus on the higher line, while sad pictures increased the tendency to focus on the lower pitches. Sad pictures also increased the tendency to segregate the lines and focus on slower melodic movement.