Evidence of temporal and emotional alignment between song cues and their evoked autobiographical memories.

Hearing music can evoke vivid memories from one's past. Here, we examined how musical versus verbal features of pop songs influenced retrieval of autobiographical memories (AMs) and explored mechanisms of action. We first compared the quantity and quality of AMs evoked by musical cues (popular songs...

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Publicado en:Memory & Cognition Vol. 53; no. 8; pp. 2394 - 2406
Autores principales: Tanberg, Pelin, Yeung, Ryan C., Fernandes, Myra A.
Formato: Artículo
Publicado: Springer Nature Nov2025
Materias:
Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
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      tig:
        atl: Evidence of temporal and emotional alignment between song cues and their evoked autobiographical memories.
      aug:
        au:
          Tanberg, Pelin
          Yeung, Ryan C.
          Fernandes, Myra A.
        affil:
          https://ror.org/01aff2v68 Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue West, N2L 3G1, Waterloo, ON, Canada
          https://ror.org/03dbr7087 Rotman Research Institute, Baycrest Academy for Research and Education, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
      su:
        Music
        Emotions
        Affect (Psychology)
        Prompts (Psychology)
        T-test (Statistics)
        Statistical significance
        Research funding
        Phonological awareness
        Mann Whitney U Test
        Descriptive statistics
        Autobiographical memory
        Speech perception
        Data analysis software
      sug:
        subj:
          Music
          Emotions
          Affect (Psychology)
          Prompts (Psychology)
          T-test (Statistics)
          Statistical significance
          Research funding
          Phonological awareness
          Mann Whitney U Test
          Descriptive statistics
          Autobiographical memory
          Speech perception
          Data analysis software
      keyword:
        Emotion
        Lyrics
        Music-evoked autobiographical memories
        Psychology and Cognitive Sciences Psychology
        Emotion
        Lyrics
        Music-evoked autobiographical memories
        Psychology and Cognitive Sciences Psychology
      ab: Hearing music can evoke vivid memories from one's past. Here, we examined how musical versus verbal features of pop songs influenced retrieval of autobiographical memories (AMs) and explored mechanisms of action. We first compared the quantity and quality of AMs evoked by musical cues (popular songs) versus matched nonmusical cues (spoken lyrics). On each trial, participants (N = 84) listened to an auditory cue, which was either musical (a song clip) or spoken (a computer-generated neutral voice reading the lyrics from the song clip). While listening, participants indicated via button press whether the cue evoked an AM – if so, they described the AM in text, then rated the AM's properties (e.g., age of the memory, feelings of reliving, cue familiarity). We found that song cues were significantly more likely to evoke AMs (M = 49%) than spoken cues (M = 33%), even when controlling for cue familiarity. Song cues also elicited significantly greater feelings of reliving the evoked AM, compared to spoken cues, though this effect disappeared after controlling for cue familiarity. Critically, we found evidence of temporal and emotional alignment between cues and their evoked AMs: older cues (e.g., songs released in 2017 vs. 2020) evoked older AMs, and more positive cues (e.g., songs of higher valence, as derived from Spotify audio features) evoked AMs with more positive content (as derived from sentiment analysis). Findings suggest that song cues enhance AM accessibility by setting the temporal and emotional contexts for retrieval.
      pubtype: Academic Journal
      doctype: Article
      src: R
    language: English
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