The Effect of Depressive and Threatening Music Themes on Recall and Judgment of Frequency for Emotional and Neutral Stimuli in Students

The purpose of this study was to find the effect of music on the processing of emotional and neutral stimuli in students and it has been implemented via a posttest with control group design. To do so، first، 60 students with special entry requirements were selected in Payam-e-Nour University of Borujen. To ensure the absence of anxiety and depression in participants، the Cattell Anxiety Scale (Cattell، 1957) and Beck Depression Inventory (short form) (Beck، 1967) were conducted. Then، they were divided into three groups (two experimental and one control group in randomized substitution manner. Then an experimental group was exposed to music with a depressive music theme and the other group was exposed to music with the theme of threat and anxiety. At the end، all three groups accomplished the tasks of recall and judgment of frequency of emotional and neutral words in a computerized task. The data of this research were analyzed in repeated measure method by SPSS13 software and it was showed that the different themes of music have created a relative mood congruent bias (P = 0. 05) in processing of information.