The Effect of a Musical Mood Induction Procedure on Mood State-Dependent Word Retrieval

The purpose of this experiment was to replicate and expand upon an earlier study by Thaut and de I'Etoile (1993) by ex amining the effect of a musical mood induction procedure on mood state-dependent word retrieval. Participants (N = 45) completed a 2-day testing procedure. On day one, partici pants read a list of adjectives and wrote down an antonym for each one. On day two, participants recalled as many of the antonyms as possible. During the testing procedure, par ticipants were placed in 1of4 conditions: (a) mood induction at encoding, (b) mood induction at recall, (c) no mood induc tion, and (d) mood induction at both encoding and recall. The mood induction procedure included 3 steps. Partici pants first assessed their current mood state using a visual analog scale. They then listened to music for 5 minutes, de termined the mood of the piece while listening, and tried to match their mood to the music. Finally, participants again used the visual analog scale to indicate their mood. Results indicated that participants who received mood induction prior to both encoding and recall were able to retrieve signif icantly more words than participants who did not undergo any mood induction. The results are discussed in light of the associative network theory of memory and emotions and the treatment of mood disorders. In the mid-1970s, psychologists began to recognize the profound effect of emotional states on cognitive processes, especially mem ory performance (Ellis & Hunt, 1988; Searleman & Herrmann, 1994). Research findings in this area contributed to the identifica