The effects of musical preference on spatial-temporal reasoning
Tom Withey
University of Wales Institute, Cardiff
Research
(Husain et al., 2002) shows that
after listening to 10 minutes of music that is considered arousing and mood
uplifting, spatial-temporal reasoning improves due to the fast tempo of the
sound. Fast tempo music is usually considered as happy music (Schellenberg et al., 2008) and has been found to be
more enjoyable than sad music (usually slow-tempo music) (Thompson et al., 2001). However, fast tempo music is not always liked and people do
like music that is slow in tempo (Schellenberg et al., 2008). The current study tested this by asking participants
to perform mental rotation tasks after listening to fast or slow tempo music
that was either liked or disliked. Preliminary analyses suggest that
performance improved after listening to music that was considered to be
enjoyable regardless of its tempo. This suggests that musical preference may
mediate the mood and arousal effect of cognitive performance.
