Is there a specific Vivaldi effect on verbal memory functions? Evidence from listening to music in younger and older adults

Brief exposure to music has been reported to lead to transient improvement of cognitive functions in no-music domains. Regarding the possible roles of working memory, processing of acoustic regularities, arousal and emotions in mediating the effects of music on subsequent cognition, the present study explored if brief listening to music might produce a subsequent transient change of verbal functions. A large sample (n = 448) of younger (mean 28 years) and older (mean 72 years) individuals were studied to represent different background abilities. Verbal working memory (WM) and phonologically-cued semantic retrieval were assessed using the forward digit span test (F-DST) and word fluency test (WFT). To account for arousing, emotional and previous expertise effects, F-DST and WFT scores were measured only in non-musicians after listening to novel (unknown) excerpts of three different composers (Mozart, Vivaldi and Glass) and after silence, with individual preference for each condition subjectively rated. It was found that brief exposure to music had no beneficial effect on verbal WM, with even a transient impairment emerging after Vivaldi. In contrast, Vivaldi’s excerpt induced a marked enhancement of word fluency, but only in young adults, whereas listening to Mozart’s composition was followed by decreased WFT scores in the two age groups. These results show that depending on composer- or excerpt-specific music features, listening to music can selectively facilitate or inhibit ongoing verbal functions. It is suggested that these effects are mediated by pro-active priming or interference of residual activations induced by music in working memory loops