Music has attracted longstanding debate surrounding its capacity to communicate without words, but little empirical work addressed the topic. Here, 534 participants in US and a remote region of China participated two experiments using novel paradigm investigate narrative perceptions as semantic dimension music. Participants listened wordless musical excerpts determined which presented stories w...

Although listening to background music is common, there no consensus about its effects on cognitive-task performance. One potential mediating factor that could resolve the inconsistency in findings arousal. To explore role of arousal effect music, this survey study directly explored people’s habits during a variety everyday tasks varying their complexity including studying, reading, driving, an...

Although experimental research has confirmed the capacity of the human cognitive system to process information that does not reach consciousness (unconscious perception), empirical evidence of the incidence of subliminal verbal messages included on audiotapes claiming to improve human resources and correct some behavioral problems is meager and inconsistent. Our study assesses the influence of ...

Background: This study investigated patients' understanding of the role of music in coping and in influencing their well-being. Methods: A qualitative study was conducted based on semi-structured interviews with 17 cancer patients. Participants were chosen from a group of patients who had listened to or played music as a means of coping with their illness. Results: The study shows the importanc...

Driver anger could be potentially harmful for road safety and longterm health. Because of its mood inducing properties, music is assumed to be a potential medium that could prevent anger induction during driving. In the current study the influence of music on anger, mood, skin conductance, and systolic blood pressure was investigated during anger inducing scenarios in a driving simulator. 100 p...

While many studies have examined melodic fission of familiar and unfamiliar interleaved Western melodies, melodic fission in trance music, an electronic dance music genre, has not yet been studied. Melodic material is relatively constant throughout a trance song, while timbre, texture, and dynamics vary over time. In this study, participants listened to several clips of trance music with two or...