Journal
SCIENTIFIC REPORTS
Volume 3, Issue -, Pages -Publisher
NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP
DOI: 10.1038/srep02028
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Funding
- Ministry of Education, Science, Sports and Culture, Japanese Government [A06]
- [25285201]
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Debates on the origins of consonance and dissonance in music have a long history. While some scientists argue that consonance judgments are an acquired competence based on exposure to the musical-system-specific knowledge of a particular culture, others favor a biological explanation for the observed preference for consonance. Here we provide experimental confirmation that this preference plays an adaptive role in human cognition: it reduces cognitive interference. The results of our experiment reveal that exposure to a Mozart minuet mitigates interference, whereas, conversely, when the music is modified to consist of mostly dissonant intervals the interference effect is intensified.
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