Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Determined whether learning about the musical pieces induced more or less cognitive load in listeners, we conducted an experiment to examine how the amount of priory provided information about musical compositions affect music appreciation. 103 middle and high school Japanese student participated. After exposure (or nonexposure) to information about two musical compositions with Italian or German lyrics, they listened to the music and completed a questionnaire. The results demonstrate that the effects of preinformation on music appreciation could occur in the evaluation of emotional valence, only in a music composition whose tune of music and meaning of lyrics do not match. Adding background information to the lecture of lyrics did not earn a prominent merit, although its harmful effects have not been observed. The scores of immersion did not reflect the amount of preinformation but the extent to which the participants habitually focused on lyrics.