Musical soundtracks as a schematic influence on the cognitive processing of filmed events

Previous research has demonstrated that the accompanying music of a film ca n influence both the affective impact of a scene as well as its subsequent remembering. The intent here was to investigate whether the affect of music can also contribute to a story's comprehension by guiding the course of se lective attending and providing a more elaborative encoding of characters' actions, motivations, and inherent temperament. These ideas were examined b y presenting participants with three ambiguous film clips accompanied by po sitive, negative, and no music. Immediately after viewing each clip, some p articipants were asked to extrapolate the film's ending, evaluate the perso nality and motivations of the main character(s), and complete a series of b ipolar adjective ratings about the film's actions. In addition, other parti cipants returned a week later for a surprise recognition test that assessed their memory for certain objects within each film. Results revealed that r elative to the control group of no music, positive and negative music signi ficantly biased viewers' interpretation and subsequent remembering of a fil m in a mood-congruent fashion. These findings are discussed in terms of the schematic influences of music upon the cognitive processing of visual scen es.