Music education in junior high school: Perception of emotions conveyed by music and mental imagery in students who attend the standard or musical curriculum

Abstract

The ability to perceive emotions conveyed by music and recognize multiple and mixed emotions improves with age. Several studies have found that mental imagery is one of the mechanisms that underlie emotional reactivity to music, and music has a facilitating effect on mental imagery. In particular, researchers have hypothesized a relationship between the perception of emotions expressed by music, visual imagery, and musical training. However, the results of previous studies are not homogenous. This study investigated the ability to perceive emotions in music in 130 students in their final year of junior high school and analyzed the contribution of musical training in visual imagery performances. Each student listened to one of two musical tracks, which were arranged to convey positive and negative emotions, respectively. After listening, the students reported the emotions they perceived and completed a visual imagery test. The results showed that the students could recognize simple, multiple and mixed emotions conveyed by the music. Moreover, the musically-trained students showed higher visual imagery ability.

Keywords

music training mixed emotions visual imagery

Music perception involves complex brain functions, which include acoustic analysis, auditory memory, and processing of musical syntax and semantics. Neuroimaging studies indicate that music engages the auditory cortex and a vast network of brain areas that govern auditory perception, syntactic and semantic processing, attention, memory, motor skills, and mood control (Sarkamo, Tervaniemi, & Houtilainen, 2013). In particular, music potentially affects emotions, influencing the autonomic nervous system, the hormonal system, and activating pre-motor representations (Koelsch & Siebel, 2005).

The studies that have investigated the relationship between music and emotions have focused on the nature of affective responses to music and the perception and expression of emotions in music (Scherer, 2004; Scherer & Coutinho, 2013; Swaminathan & Schellenberg, 2015). According to Joiner and Katz (1999), listening to music evokes emotions in a two-stage process. In the initial stage, listeners recognize associations between musical cues and specific emotions; in the second step, emotional responses are evoked contagiously in the same way that being around someone who is depressed can make one feel sad.

In line with this view, a study from Hunter, Schellenberg, and Schimmack (2010) found that listeners’ perceptions mediate emotional responses to music. In this regard, some researchers (e.g., Kawakami et al., 2013a; Lundqvist, Carlsson, Hilmersson, & Juslin, 2009; Hunter et al., 2010) have differentiated felt emotion from perceived emotion conveyed by the music. Listeners can perceive the emotions expressed by music, such as sadness or happiness, but not feel sad or happy. Listeners can acknowledge the emotion conveyed by music using cues, such as tempo or volume, but the emotions they feel can be different from the emotions that they perceived in music (Kawakami et al., 2013a; Kawakami, Furukawa, Katahira, Kamiyama, & Okanoya, 2013b; Kawakami, Furukawa & Okanoya, 2014).

Perceived and felt emotions are usually coincidental (Schubert, 2013). However, they can be incongruent with regard to some particular musical structures (Kawakami et al., 2013b; Kallinen and Ravaja, 2006). Listeners sometimes report feeling pleasure in response to sad sounding music (Garrido & Schubert, 2011), or negative emotions when listening to pieces they like (Schubert, 2013). There are also individual differences in the extent to which felt and perceived emotions correspond. Empathic individuals are likely to feel the emotions they perceive while listening to music (Egermann & McAdams, 2013). However, the border between felt and perceived emotions is vague (Eerola & Vuoskoski, 2010). The two alternatives should be seen as opposite extremes of a continuum, and empirical studies have found more similarities than differences between them (Kallinen & Ravaja, 2006).

The association between musical characteristics and emotions is established for happiness and sadness in adults. Listeners tend to associate faster tempi and the major mode with joy, and slower tempi and the minor mode with sadness (Hunter et al., 2010). Davies (1978) found that the major mode is happy, joyous, graceful, and playful, while the minor mode is sad, dreamy, and sentimental. Moreover, he highlighted that fixed rhythms, which have fixed sequences and phases, are perceived as vigorous and solemn, while flowing rhythms are perceived as cheerful, graceful, dreamy, and delicate. Complex and dissonant harmonies are evaluated as exciting, agitated, vigorous, and tending to sadness, while simple consonant harmonies are perceived as happy, graceful, serene, and lyrical. The differences in expressiveness between ascending and descending melodic contour are not distinguished.

Several researchers (e.g., Rodica Baltes & Miu, 2014) have discussed the musical induction of emotions. Juslin and Västfjäll (2008) have highlighted the contribution of cognitive appraisal, brain stem reflexes, emotional contagion, evaluative conditioning, visual imagery, episodic memory, and musical expectancy. Among these processes, visual mental imagery plays a pivotal role. Visual mental imagery is the process of constructing, maintaining, inspecting, and transforming visual representations of objects or events that are not present, and different models (Kosslyn, 1980, 1983; Paivio, 1991) describe the different aspects of this process. “Generation” concerns the ability to produce visual mental representations. Images are generated from memory or environmental stimuli, such as the recall of images seen on television. “Maintenance” concerns the ability to maintain visual mental representations over a period of time. The images decay rapidly (average duration: 250 ms; Kosslyn, 1994), so according to Pearson, Logie, and Gilhooly (1999), maintenance involves the visuospatial sketchpad of working memory (Baddeley, 1986). “Inspection” or “mental scanning” is the ability to inspect visual representations mentally. During inspection, the mental image is compared to information stored in memory, and linguistic names and related meanings are attributed to it (Kosslyn, Thompson & Ganis, 2006). “Transformation,” concerns the ability to manipulate and change mental images (Pearson & Kosslyn, 2013), by rotating, restructuring, or combining rotation and restructuring in mental syntheses that produce new and original models (Pearson et al., 1999).

Scherer and Zentner (2001) hypothesized that the emotional experiences associated with music listening were related to mental images through processes of visual imagery that are dependent on memory. They hypothesized that individuals differ in the capacities to understand and respond to the emotions they perceive in the environment (empathy) and to associate stimuli from sensory modalities with images in mind (visual imagery). According to their model, “mirroring” the emotions perceived in music through processes of empathy, and the association between music and images through memory-dependent processes of visual imagery were two routes by which listeners experience emotions in music.

Some researchers (Aleman, Nieuvenstein, Böcker, & de Haan, 2000; Quittner & Glueckauf, 1983) found that music performances and music listening have facilitating effects on mental imagery. Weir and Williamson (2015) observed that musical practice improves voluntary mental imagery pitch ability, while Aleman et al. (2000) found that subjects with and without music training performed differently in tasks of auditory imagery but not in the visual imagery tasks. On the other hand, other researchers have shown that mental imagery facilitates multiple aspects of music performance. According to Keller (2012), the use of anticipatory auditory, motor, or visual imagery during musical performance produces beneficial effects on the control of parameters such as timing, intensity, articulation, and intonation. He found that individual differences in anticipatory imagery might be a source of differences in expressive performance capabilities and the quality of ensemble cohesion.

The ability to perceive emotions in music develops over the lifespan. Tempo offers more immediate access to emotion processing than mode. While young children rely on tempo rather than the mode to judge emotion in music (Gagnon & Peretz, 2003), adults use a complex combination of tempo, loudness, pitch level, mode, and consonance/dissonance (Hunter & Schellenberg, 2010). However, mode and tempo remain the most relevant factors influencing the perception of emotions in music (Peretz, Gagnon, & Bouchard; 1998). Between 7 and 11 months, infants identify mode changes (Cohen, Thorpe, & Trehub, 1987), although only a limited number of researchers have analyzed the sensitivity of childhood to mode changes (Hargreaves, 1986). In this regards, Lappe, Trainor, Herholz, and Pantev (2011) highlighted that the experience shapes recognition of emotion in music, and exposure and learning influence affective meaning in music.

Music evokes not only a single kind of emotion, but also various kinds of emotions. These emotions can have the same (multiple emotions) or opposed valences (simultaneous positive and negative emotions called “mixed emotions”). Although fast-tempo music is considered to sound happier than slow-tempo music, just as major and minor modes are happy and sad sounding, respectively, by varying tempo and mode independently, it is possible to create music with conflicting cues. Songs with a fast tempo and minor mode or slow tempo and major mode can elicit “mixed emotions” more than music with consistent cues (e.g., fast and major, slow and minor Hunter, Schellenberg, & Schimmack, 2008, 2010; Ladinig & Schellenberg, 2012; Larsen & Stastny, 2011; Swaminathan & Schellenberg, 2015). Larsen, McGraw, and Cacioppo (2001) have demonstrated that positive and negative emotions can be perceived or activated simultaneously in some circumstances. Researchers don’t frequently report mixed emotions because the participants in the studies are usually instructed to use only a specific adjective to indicate the perceived emotion or bipolar scales that oscillate between two “opposite” emotions (Zentner, Grandjean, & Scherer, 2008; Juslin & Laukka, 2004).

The ability to perceive and feel mixed and multiple emotions increases with age. Heubeck, Butcher, Thorneywork, and Wood (2016) demonstrated that children understand that single events can evoke multiple emotions of the same valence as early as 6 years of age. This ability improves slowly during childhood. Children report and consider possible mixed and multiple emotions involving sadness earlier than combinations of emotions involving anger or fear. The ability to provide reasons for mixed emotions involving fear develops most slowly (Heubeck et al., 2016).

Research aims

The ability to perceive emotions in music develops during childhood, with the improving ability to recognize multiple and mixed emotions. Visual imagery is one of the main processes involved in emotional reactivity to music (Juslin &Västfjäll, 2008).

Based on these considerations, the overall goals of this exploratory study were: (1) to investigate whether the students who attend the last grade of junior high school can perceive simple, multiple, and mixed emotions expressed by the music; and (2) to analyze whether training in music influences emotional reactivity to music and visual imagery performances.

Methods

Participants

The participants were 130 students (64 males and 66 females; mean age = 12.62 years, SD = .48), who were in the third grade at a junior high school in Italy. In Italy, junior high school comprises three grades; the students attend it between the ages of 10.8 and 13 years.

The students attended classes with either a standard scholastic curriculum (SC) or a musical curriculum (MC). The SC provided two hours of collective music lessons in a week. The lessons comprised aspects of the theory of the music and basic instruction on simple musical instruments, such as the recorder. The MC provided the standard training of music and extra individual and group music lessons for 5 hours per week. The students of the MC learned to play a musical instrument, such as piano, guitar, violin, oboe, percussion, and harp. Moreover, they played in the school orchestra.

Participants were matched by sex and academic curriculum. For each group class, all the students who attended the MC (65 students, including 32 males and 33 females) and the same number of students attending the SC (32 males; 33 females) participated in the study. When the students of the SC, in a group class, were more numerous than music-trained students, students were selected randomly to participate in the study.

Parental and school approval and the child’s oral consent were obtained before test administration. The research followed Ethical Code for Italian psychologists (L. 18.02.1989, n. 56), Italian law for data privacy (DLGS 196/2003), and Ethical Code for Psychological Research (March 27, 2015) approved by Italian Psychologists Association.

Procedures

The students participated in an individual session of music listening in the school music laboratory during school time. Each student listened to one of two musical tracks, which were arranged according to musical characteristics that convey specific emotions. The first track was arranged to express the “positive” emotions of joy and serenity, the second was arranged with the musical characteristics that are associated with “negative” emotions, such as sadness and fear. After listening, students completed a questionnaire on the emotions they perceived in music and completed a visual imagery test.

The musical tracks

A composer composed two musical tracks using the Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI). The tracks were arranged according to the musical characteristics that are commonly associated with the different emotions of joy and serenity for track 1, and sadness and fear for track 2. The different emotional tone of the music was expressed by varying tones, timbres, dynamics, and tempo. The tracks were improved using some software plug-ins with the aim of faithfully replicating the real timbre of different musical instruments. In some parts of the tracks, the original digital MIDI sounds were preserved. These sounds recall the typical soundtracks of video games, which are familiar to children and adolescents.

Preliminarily to the study, a large sample of adults aged from 18 to 40 listened to the musical tracks, with the aim of evaluating the correspondence between the musical characteristics of each track and the emotions conveyed by the music. The inter-listener reliability was very high (r = .98). The adults perceived positive emotions (serenity, joy, happiness) on track 1 and negative emotions (sadness, fear, tension) on track 2. Each musical track was 2.5 minutes in duration. For further details on the musical tracks, see the Supplemental Materials available online.

Measures

Questionnaire on the emotions conveyed by music

After musical listening, the listeners completed a questionnaire on their perceived emotions. They could report all the emotions they perceived, and write comments. Children could choose one or more of the basic emotions (joy, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, and disgust; Ekman, 1992), and/or report freely other emotions or feelings. A previous study showed that music conveys all the basic emotions (Mohn, Argstatter, & Wilker, 2010). The number of perceived emotions, the kind (simple, multiple, or mixed) of emotions, the frequency of each emotion, and the association of different emotions were recorded.

Mental imagery battery

Each student completed a mental imagery battery (Mental Imagery Test; Di Nuovo, Castellano, & Guarnera, 2014) in an individual setting, after listening one of the two musical tracks and compilation of the questionnaire on emotions. The battery measured the generation, maintenance, inspection, and transformation of different categories of images. It showed good psychometric characteristics and reliability. Cronbach’s alpha was .75 for children aged 8–13 years. The item analysis (item/total test) showed values higher than .30.

The battery comprised eight tasks; the score for each task was the sum of the correct responses. The first task measured the ability to visualize letters. This kind of task assessed the ability to generate images of the letters (Bridge, Harrold, Holmes, Stokes, & Kerrard, 2012). The subjects had to indicate whether some uppercase letters showed curved parts (e.g., A, P, R), while these letters were sequentially named (range score was 1–12). The second test was the Brooks ‘F’ Test. The students had to imagine walking along the contour of a sizeable uppercase letter F previously viewed for 30 seconds on a printed card, and report whether the edges encountered when moving from the lower left corner in a counter-clockwise direction are external or internal (range score: 1–10). The third task, Clock, was derived from the classical tasks involving the “mental clock” used for neuropsychological assessment. It required imaging a clock with hands indicating ten past ten. The subject had to image the clock reflected in a mirror and indicate what time s/he thought the reflected clock would show after 10 minutes. This task measured the ability to manipulate and rotate mental images (range score: 0–4; 2 points for each correct response). The fourth task, Cube, consisted of the presentation of a picture of a large cube for 30 seconds. The cube was composed of nine small cubes per face, and the external faces were colored. After the stimulus was removed, the subject had to state how many small cubes had three external (colored) faces, how many had two, one, or none (range score: 0–8; 2 points for each correct response).

In the fifth task, Subtraction of Parts, the students observed a digital display with the number 88 composed of small segments for 10 seconds. Then they observed for 10 seconds another digital display with selected segments of a two-digit number. The participants had to imagine what two-digit number would remain after subtracting the parts of the new figure from that seen previously. The task required the ability to generate a mental image and mentally manipulate it by subtracting a part from it. All the items foresee a solution composed of a two-digit number, so the score varied from 1 to 2 for each item (range score 0–12).

In the sixth task, Mental Exploration of a Map, the student had to study a map of an island, fixing the distances among some elements. The elements were a house, a church, a lake, and a plank of wood. After the map was removed, the subject had to respond to four questions about the distance between couples of the elements (range score: 0–6; 1 point for the first two items, 2 points for the other items). This task derived from the works of Kosslyn (Kosslyn, 1980; Kosslyn et al. 2006). It evaluated the ability to maintain the perceived spatial information in the mental images. The seventh task, Imagined Paths, required visualizing a small ball moving in different directions, following a suggested path in the imagined space. The subject had to indicate whether, at the end of the route, the ball would have ended up above or below the starting point, or at the same level (range score 0–11; 1 point for the items from 1 to 5, 2 points for the others). In the last task, Mental Representation of Shapes of Objects, the subject heard the names of 20 familiar, concrete objects (e.g., bottle, pizza), and had to indicate if each object had a taller or larger shape (range score 0–20).

Results and discussion

First, data analyses aimed to analyze in-depth whether students in the final grade of junior high school could perceive simple, multiple, and mixed emotions in music. Frequencies, percentages, descriptive analysis of the responses to the questionnaire on perceived emotion, and the differences in the perception of emotions by music track were calculated. Moreover, some qualitative data on the feelings and thoughts of the students were reported.

Second, with the aim of investigating the contribution of music training on the emotional reaction to music and visual imagery skills, the differences in the emotional perception and mental imagery performance of the students who attended the MC and SC were calculated. A goal of this study was to verify whether expressiveness between ascending and descending melodic contour musical training could influence the perception of emotion and visual imagery ability, which is a prerequisite for academic learning (Guarnera, Faraci, & Commodari, 2017).

Perception of emotion conveyed by the music

The students reported between one and three emotions after listening to one of the two musical tracks (number of perceived emotions: M = 1.78; SD = .59). Forty students (30.8% of the participants) perceived one emotion, 78 students (60% of the participants) perceived two emotions, and 12 students (9.2% of the participants) perceived three emotions. Of the 90 students who perceived two or three emotions, 53 listeners (40.8%) perceived multiple emotions, and 37 listeners (28.5%) perceived mixed emotions. The emotions of “joy,” “sadness,” “anger,” “fear,” and “disgust” were reported (see Table 1 for frequencies and percentages for each basic emotion). None of the participants reported the emotion of surprise. Independently by track, the students most frequently perceived the emotion of “joy” (52.3% of the listeners). Of these listeners, 21 reported “joy” as a simple emotion, while 47 reported it as part of multiple or mixed emotions.

Table 1.

Frequencies and percentages of the perceived emotions.

Emotions		n	Percentage of participant responses
Joy	Simple emotion	21	16.2
	Multiple or mixed emotion	47	36.2
	Total	68	52.4
Sadness	Simple emotion	7	5.4
	Multiple or mixed emotion	31	31.5
	Total	48	36.9
Fear	Simple emotion	8	6.2
	Multiple or mixed emotion	45	34.6
	Total	51	40.8
Anger	Simple emotion	0	0
	Multiple or mixed emotion	13	13
	Total	13	13
Disgust	Simple emotion
	Multiple or mixed emotion	8	6.2
	Total	8	6.2

A total of 36.9% of the 130 listeners perceived “sadness.” “Sadness” was perceived both as simple (5.4% of listeners) and as a multiple or mixed emotion (31.5% of listeners). Listeners who perceived “fear” totaled 39.2%. The majority of the listeners perceived this emotion as part of mixed emotion. Ten percent of the listeners reported “anger.” It was always perceived as part of a mixed emotion. In general, the listeners reported mixed emotions that were composed of “joy” with “sadness,” “fear,” or “anger” (“joy” and “sadness: 17 participants;” “joy” and “fear”: seven participants; “anger” and “joy”: 15 listeners).

Results also showed that track influenced the number of perceived emotions. It was higher in the students who listened to track 2 (track 1: number of perceived emotions: M = 1.67, SD = .56; track 2, number of perceived emotions: M = 1.89, SD = .61; t = -2.08, p = .03). Track 1 listeners more frequently perceived the emotion of “joy” (56 of the 65 listeners of this track). Nineteen listeners perceived it as a simple emotion, 37 listeners as “mixed” or “multiple” emotion. When “joy” was part of a mixed emotion, it was associated with “sadness” (15 listeners), “fear” (five listeners), “anger” (one listener), “anger” and “sadness” (two listeners), and “fear” and “sadness” (three listeners).

Track 2 listeners more frequently perceived the emotion of “fear.” Eight listeners perceived “fear” as a single emotion, and 36 listeners perceived it as a component of multiple or mixed emotions. Other emotions the listeners perceived in this track were “sadness” (4 listeners as simple emotion, 24 listeners as part of mixed or multiple emotions), “disgust” (6 listeners) and “anger” (12 listeners). Interestingly, 11 track 2 listeners, which was arranged to convey “negative” emotions, perceived “joy,” both as simple (2 listeners) and mixed emotion (9 listeners). The remaining listeners reported “anxiety” or “tension.” Chi-square analyses showed that track 1 listeners did not differ from track 2 listeners in reporting the emotion of sadness as single emotion, although track 1 aimed to convey positive emotions and track 2 negative emotions (see Table 2). No differences by gender in the perception of emotion conveyed by music were found.

Table 2.

Frequencies, percentages, and chi square values of the perceived emotions by listened track.

		Track		χ²	df	p.
		One	Two	χ²	df	p.
	Simple	24	11	21.23^*	2	< .001
Kind of emotions	Multiple	15	41
	Mixed	26	13
Joy	No	9	53	24.294^*	1	< .001
	Yes	56	12
Sadness	No	45	37	2.11	1	.14
	Yes	20	28
Fear	No	58	21
	Yes	7	44	8.52	1	.004
Disgust	No	63	59	2.13	1	.144
	Yes	2	6
Anger	No	64	53	10.34	1	.001
	Yes	1	12

Note: *p < .05.

Although the majority of the students selected one or more of the six basic emotions, some of them reported feelings and thoughts, by using adjectives and nouns freely chosen. In several cases, they used synonyms (e.g., “happiness,” instead of “joy”), in other cases, they reported terms that did not correspond to any of the alternatives in the questionnaire (e.g., “uncertainty”). In the following paragraph, we report the more interesting of the participants’ responses.

A boy defined track 2 as “joyful.” It reminded him of the “gloom” of horror movies and therefore “made him laugh.” Another track 2 listener grasped the dichotomy of his choice (“joy–fear”) explaining that listening to the piece gave him a sense of “security and insecurity.” Two girls, who reported the emotions of “fear–disgust–sadness” and “rage–disgust–sadness,” respectively, enriched their responses with two strong comments: “Crushed by the rest of the world, lower,” and “to be forgotten by others, to be alone.” These qualitative data contributed to providing rich and detailed descriptions of the thoughts and feelings of the adolescents when listening to music and showed the complexity of their interiority.

Perception of emotion conveyed by music and mental imagery in the students who attended the standard and musical curriculum

Several t-tests and chi-square analyses were calculated with the aim of evaluating whether students of the two academic curricula differed in the perception of emotions in music and mental imagery processes. The t-test values showed that the students of the MC did not differ in the number of perceived emotions from their peers who attended the SC. The chi-square analysis, which was calculated to evaluate the differences in the frequencies at which each emotion was reported, showed that the students of the MC who listened to track 2 perceived “sadness” more frequently than their peers who went to the SC and listened to the same musical piece, χ²(1) = 5.62, p = .01. No differences were observed in between the perception of simple, multiple or mixed emotions.

Moreover, the MC students presented higher mental imagery abilities compared to their peers who attended the SC. In particular, these students showed higher scores in the Cube and Visualizing Letter tests, t = 2.25, p = .02; t = 2.32, p < .03, respectively; see Table 3 for significant results), which measured the ability to generate and manipulate mental images. This result is of interest. The ability to generate and manipulate mental representations is related to several academic skills, which are important for academic success (Apel & Masterson, 2001; Russeler, Scholz, Jordan, & Quaiser-Pohl (2005). In particular, reading, writing, math, and geometry involve the ability to manipulate mental representations.

Table 3.

Mean, standard deviation and t-values of mental imagery tasks by academic curriculum (significant results).

	Curriculum	M	SD	t	p	95% confidence intervalsLL UL*
Cube	Musical	1.81	2.28	2.25	.02	.09 1.51
	Standard	1.01	1.78
Visualizing letter	Musical	11.67	.61	2.30	.03	.07 .97
	Standard	11.14	1.60

LL: lower limit; UL: upper limit.

Conclusion

Results showed that students aged 12 and 13 could perceive simple emotions such as joy or sadness, multiple emotions of the same valence such as sadness and fear or joy and serenity, or mixed emotions, which are involves the association of emotions with opposite valence. In particular, the students perceived “sadness” in association with other emotions. The ability to recognize a combination of emotions involving sadness develops, in fact, more precociously than the ability to recognize other “mixed emotions” (Heubeck et al., 2016). However, “mixed emotions” involving “fear” and “anger” were also reported. This issue showed that the adolescents could perceive combinations of emotions involving fear or anger, which are combinations that appear later during development (Heubeck et al., 2016).

Independently from the track participants were assigned, the most commonly reported emotions were “joy,” “sadness,” and “fear.” As expected, “joy” was reported most often by track 1 listeners, which was composed according to the musical characteristics that conveyed positive emotions. However, interestingly, some of the listeners also perceived “joy” in the track that presented musical characteristics commonly associated with negative emotions. This result showed some differences in the way in which young people perceive music characteristics compared to adults. The listeners more frequently perceived “joy” as a simple emotion, while the emotions of “sadness,” “fear,” “anger,” and “disgust” were often reported in association with other emotions, both of the same and opposite valence.

The study also showed the importance of musical training in school. Although results showed that the ability to perceive emotions in music was independent of musical practice, the trained students showed higher ability in the cognitive area of mental imagery. These students performed better in the tasks that measured mental imagery skills and were better able to produce and use mental representations compared to their peers with less extensive musical training.

These findings are of interest. They contribute to deepening the results of previous studies on the relationship between mental images and listening to music (e.g., Quittner & Glueckauf, 1983; Aleman et al., 2000), showing that musical training increases the ability to produce mental representations. In particular, the observation that the students who attend the MC showed a greater ability to visualize letters is fascinating. Visual decoding is one of the main abilities involved in reading, (see Vellutino, Fletcher, Snowling, & Scanlon, 2004), and the observation that students trained in music showed a greater ability to visualize letters highlighted the close relationship between auditory and visual analysis in reading skills.

Considerations

Although this study has several limitations and does not provide longitudinal data, it contributes to understanding the emotional reactivity to music in adolescents, and the role of musical training in emotional reactivity and imagery skills. Moreover, it could have interesting practical applications. The enhancement of musical skills in the students could favor the development of the ability to discriminate sounds. Musical training could positively influence hearing analysis, in particular, phonological analysis, which has positive effects on reading skills and all other scholastic skills that involve reading, such as all the subjects that present didactic contents in a written form.

Supplemental Material

POM832962-Supp-Mat – Supplemental material for Music education in junior high school: Perception of emotions conveyed by music and mental imagery in students who attend the standard or musical curriculum

Supplemental material, POM832962-Supp-Mat for Music education in junior high school: Perception of emotions conveyed by music and mental imagery in students who attend the standard or musical curriculum by Elena Commodari and Jasmine Sole in Psychology of Music

Footnotes

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Elena Commodari

Supplemental material

Supplemental material for this article is available online.

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