Mozart Effect in Musical Fit? A Commentary on Yeoh & North
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Date
2010-01
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Journal ISSN
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Publisher
Empirical Musicology Review
Abstract
Musical fit, the congruence between music and product leading to
improved response, is presented as an explanation of differences in recall of food items
from two cultures. Musical fit predicts that, in this case, more Indian food items would be
recalled when Indian music was playing, and more Malay food items would be recalled
when Malay music was played. The underlining premise of this prediction is priming (the
music primes memories of associated food items, facilitating recall). The testing was
performed using three ethnic groups of participants, Indian, Malay, and Chinese. The
priming effects were only identified among the Chinese group. A reanalysis of the data
presented here indicates that the overall recall of food items is best facilitated by Indian
music, regardless of whether the food item is Indian or Malay, and further, each ethnicity
reported more items in the Indian music condition. The Mozart effect was also based on
the premise of priming activation and was later debunked in favor of an arousal-mood
hypothesis. This commentary discusses whether arousal-mood, a more generalized
activation leading to improved performance than priming, might better explain the
results. While priming and congruence more plausibly explains musical fit than the
Mozart effect, the possibility of testing other hypotheses are considered worthwhile.
Description
Keywords
musical fit, priming, arousal-mood, Mozart effect
Citation
Empirical Musicology Review, v5 n1 (January 2010), 18-22