This article is based on the assumption of musical power to change the listener’s mood. The paper studies the outcome of two experiments on the regulation of emotional states in a series of participants who listen to different auditions. The present research focuses on note value, an important musical cue related to rhythm. The influence of two concepts linked to note value is analyzed separately and discussed together. The two musical cues under investigation are tempo and rhythmic unit. The participants are asked to label music fragments by using opposite meaningful words belonging to four semantic scales, namely “Tension” (ranging from Relaxing to Stressing), “Expressiveness” (Expressionless to Expressive), “Amusement” (Boring to Amusing) and “Attractiveness” (Pleasant to Unpleasant). The participants also have to indicate how much they feel certain basic emotions while listening to each music excerpt. The rated emotions are “Happiness”, “Surprise”, and “Sadness”. This study makes it possible to draw some interesting conclusions about the associations between note value and emotions.

Meta-analyses and reviews on emotion research have shown the use of film clips to be one of the most effective methods of mood induction. Nonetheless, the effectiveness of this method when positive, negative and neutral emotional targets are studied under similar experimental conditions is currently unknown. This comprehensive meta-analysis included only studies that implemented neutral, positive and negative mood inductions to evaluate the effectiveness of the film clip method as a mood induction procedure. In addition, several factors related to the films, sample and experimental procedure used, the number of emotional categories, for example, or the number of film clips watched, were included to study their influence on the effectiveness of this mood induction procedure. Forty-five studies were included with 6675 participants and 12 possible moderator variables according to the sample and the research procedure. Our findings suggest that film clips are especially powerful in inducing negative mood states (Hedges’ g for valence = -1.49 and for arousal = -1.77) although they are also effective inducers of positive mood states (Hedges’ g for valence of = . -1.22 and for arousal = -1.34). Additionally, this meta-analysis reveals that variables, such as the number of emotional categories or the type of stimulus used to measure the baseline, should be considered.

The objectives of this study are to compare the Autobiographical Memory Test (AMT) performance of two healthy samples of younger and older adults and to analyse the relationship between overgeneral memory (OGM) and working memory executive processes (WMEP) using a structural equation modelling with latent variables. The AMT and sustained attention, short-term memory and working memory tasks were administered to a group of young adults (N = 50) and a group of older adults (N = 46). On the AMT, the older adults recalled a greater number of categorical memories (p = .000) and fewer specific memories (p = .000) than the young adults, confirming that OGM occurs in the normal population and increases with age. WMEP was measured by reading span and a working memory with sustained attention load task. Structural equation modelling reflects that WMEP shows a strong relationship with OGM: lower scores on WMEP reflect an OGM phenomenon characterized by higher categorical and lower specific memories.