Music education in junior high school: Perception of emotions conveyed by music and mental imagery in students who attend the standard or musical curriculum

The ability to perceive emotions conveyed by music and recognize multiple and mixed emotions improves with age. Several studies have found that mental imagery is one of the mechanisms that underlie emotional reactivity to music, and music has a facilitating effect on mental imagery. In particular, researchers have hypothesized a relationship between the perception of emotions expressed by music, visual imagery, and musical training. However, the results of previous studies are not homogenous. This study investigated the ability to perceive emotions in music in 130 students in their final year of junior high school and analyzed the contribution of musical training in visual imagery performances. Each student listened to one of two musical tracks, which were arranged to convey positive and negative emotions, respectively. After listening, the students reported the emotions they perceived and completed a visual imagery test. The results showed that the students could recognize simple, multiple and mixed emotions conveyed by the music. Moreover, the musically-trained students showed higher visual imagery ability.