Music education intervention improves vocal emotion recognition

The current study is an interdisciplinary examination of the interplay among music, language, and emotions. It consisted of two experiments designed to investigate the relationship between musical abilities and vocal emotional recognition. In experiment 1 (N = 24), we compared the influence of two short-term intervention programs - music and art - on vocal emotion recognition. In experiment 2 (N = 47), we compared musicians, who had undergone long-term music training, to non-musicians regarding their vocal emotion recognition. The results from experiment 1 revealed that short-term music intervention, which focused on ways music conveys emotions, significantly improved the vocal emotion recognition of the participants. In experiment 2, which examined the long-term effects of music training, there were no significant differences between musicians and non-musicians in vocal emotion recognition. The uniqueness of the short-term intervention and the inconsistency between the two experiments' findings are discussed, and possible directions for future studies are proposed.