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Felt Emotion Elicited by Music: Are Sensitivities to Various Musical Features Different for Young Children and Young Adults?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 May 2020

Xuqian Chen Open the ORCID record for Xuqian Chen [Opens in a new window] ,
Shengqiao Huang ,
Xueting Hei  and
Hongyuan Zeng
Xuqian Chen*
Affiliation:
South China Normal University (China) Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Cognitive Science of Guangdong Province (China)
Shengqiao Huang
Affiliation:
South China Normal University (China) Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Cognitive Science of Guangdong Province (China)
Xueting Hei
Affiliation:
South China Normal University (China) Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Cognitive Science of Guangdong Province (China)
Hongyuan Zeng
Affiliation:
Department of Education, Jiangmen Polytechnic (China)
*
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Xuqian Chen. School of Psychology, Center for Studies of Psychological Application, South China Normal University. 510631 Guangzhou (China). Email: cxqpsychology@163.com
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Abstract

In the present study, we extended the issue of how people access emotion through nonverbal information by testing the effects of simple (tempo) and complex (timbre) acoustic features of music on felt emotion. Three- to six-year-old young children (n = 100; 48% female) and university students (n = 64; 37.5% female) took part in three experiments in which acoustic features of music were manipulated to determine whether there are links between perceived emotion and felt emotion in processing musical segments. After exposure to segments of music, participants completed a felt emotion judgment task. The chi-square test showed significant tempo effects, ps < .001 (Exp. 1), and strong combined effects of mode and tempo on felt emotion. In addition, strength of these effects changed across age. However, these combined effects were significantly stronger under the tempo-and-mode consistent condition, ps < .001 (Exp. 2) than inconsistent condition (Exp. 3). In other words, simple versus complex acoustic features had stronger effects on felt emotion, and that sensitivity to these features, especially complex features, changed across age. These findings suggest that felt emotion evoked by acoustic features of a given piece of music might be affected by both innate abilities and by the strength of mappings between acoustic features and emotion.

Keywords

acoustic featuresfelt emotionmodetempotimbre
Type
Research Article
Information
The Spanish Journal of Psychology , Volume 23 , 2020 , e8
Copyright
© Universidad Complutense de Madrid and Colegio Oficial de Psicólogos de Madrid 2020

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Footnotes

This project was supported by the China Scholarship Council (No. 201906755010), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 31970983) and the Planned project of Philosophy and Social Science in Jiangmen, 2017 (No. JM2017B12).

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