MUSIC-DEPENDENT MEMORY - THE ROLES OF TEMPO CHANGE AND MOOD MEDIATION

Music-dependent memory was obtained in previous literature by changing from 1 musical piece to another. Here, the phenomenon was induced by changing only the tempo of the same musical selection. After being pre sented with a list of words, along with a piece of background music, l isteners recalled more words when the selection was played at the same tempo than when it was played at a different tempo. However, no signi ficant reduction in memory was produced by recall contexts with a chan ged timbre, a different musical selection, or no music (Experiments 1 and 2). Tempo was found to influence the arousal dimension of mood (Ex periment 3), and recall was higher in a mood context consistent (as co mpared with inconsistent) with a given tempo (Experiment 4). The resul ts support the mood-mediation hypothesis of music-dependent memory.