Exposure to music and cognitive performance: tests of children and adults

K E Y W O R D S : cognition and emotion, cognitive ability, intellectual ability, Mozart effect, music and cognition, music listening The impact of music on listeners’ emotional state is well documented (e.g. Gabrielsson, 2001; Husain et al., 2002; Krumhansl, 1997; Peretz, 2001; Schmidt and Trainor, 2001; Sloboda and Juslin, 2001; Thayer and Levenson, 1983; Thompson et al., 2001), as is the effect of emotional state on participants’ performance on a wide variety of cognitive measures. According to Russell’s (1980) circumplex model of emotions, emotions vary in two-dimensional space, with one dimension corresponding to arousal (or activation) and the other to mood (or valence). Arousal refers to degree of physical and psychological activation or to the intensity of the felt emotion, whereas mood indicates whether the emotion is positive or negative. Both arousal (Anderson and Bushman, 2001; Cahill and McGaugh, 1998; Caldwell et al., 2004; Cassady and Johnson, 2002; Dutton and Carroll, 2001;