| Since Rauscher reported the "Mozart effect", its reliability was argued heatedly. There are two main viewpoints about the mechanism of "Mozart effect":"triggering theory" and "arousal-pleasure-preference theory". Some researchers think that listening to Mozart music, which has highly structural and cyclical features, will activate brain regions involved with space-time reasoning and improve the space-time reasoning ability subsequently. Other researchers believe that the unique rhythms and patterns of Mozart music, which change the arousal, pleasure and mood conditions, caused improved cognitive ability. Both theories are probably the causing mechanism of "Mozart effect".To explore the effect of Mozart’s high periodicity, high arousal and positive mood on the processing of cognitive tasks, we selected different pieces of music with different arousals and mood types without high periodicity as control music, and tested the unique effect of Mozart by facial expression recognition tasks. In order to test the brain mechanism of Mozart Effect at the electrophysiological level, we used EEG to record and analyze the data of brain activities when children listen to music with different arousals and mood types. And ERP is applied to explore the brain mechanism of the effect of different music types on individual facial expression recognition tasks. The research carried out from three aspects:(1) we studied3-5-year-old preschoolers’facial expression (happy, sad, and neutral) recognition while they listened to Mozart music as well as different types of arousal and emotional music.(2) Using EEG technique, we explored the differences in power spectrum, gravity frequency among Mozart music and other types of music.(3) Using ERP, we explored the brain mechanisms of facial expression recognition while adults listened to Mozart music and other types of music. The results showed:1. Mozart music didn’t show unique influence on expression recognition in electroneurophysiological aspect. On the contrary, Mozart music interfered in the completion of preschoolers’ facial recognition. That is, Mozart music doesn’t have the unique effect on emotional understanding.2. Listening to music with low-degree arousal and negative emotion enhanced the preschool children’s scores of facial expression recognition. It was reflected by the improvement of accuracy rate in sad emotion recognition and the highest facial emotion recognition speed.3. Preschoolers recognized positive emotions better than negative emotions, which was reflected in the speed and accuracy rate of facial recognition. The age of4is a critical stage for children to develop sad expression recognition ability.4. While listening to music with low-degree arousal, the PS of a and the GF is minimum; and the PS of al is minimum while listening to music with low-degree arousal and positive emotion. These indicated that listening to music with low-degree arousal could be helpful to obtain suitable relaxation conditions in brain.5. The accuracy rates of recognizing happy and sad facial emotions of females were better than males. Thus females show advantages in facial expression recognition. But these advantages were not shown in preschoolers. Gender differences might contribute to children’s late development and experiences.6. The results of latency of N170、VPP and N2showed that the processing speed of sad emotion was significantly slower than happy and neutral emotions; the results of mean amplitude of EPP showed that the processing intensity of sad emotion was significantly stronger than happy and neutral emotions. Recognizing sad expression had attention advantages, and required more mental resources.7. The mean amplitude of EEP showed that the right hemisphere has an advantage over the left hemisphere in the processing intensity of happy expression, while lateralization didn’t exist in the processing of sad expression. This suggests that the right hemisphere is more involved than the left one in the processing of positive emotion. |
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