Does music enhance cognitive performance in healthy older adults? The Vivaldi effect.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS Controversial evidence suggests that music can enhance cognitive performance. In the present study, we examined whether listening to an excerpt of Vivaldi's "Four Seasons" had a positive effect on older adults' cognitive performance in two working memory tasks. METHODS With a repeated-measures design, older adults were presented with the forward version of the digit span and phonemic fluency in classical music, white-noise and no-music conditions. RESULTS Classical music significantly increased working memory performance compared with the no-music condition. In addition, this effect did not occur with white noise. CONCLUSION The authors discuss this finding in terms of the arousal-and-mood hypothesis and the role of working memory resources in aging.