The present study investigates the effects of background music on the interpretation and\ud
memory of ambiguous movie scenes. Forty-eight subjects watched three short, ambiguous film\ud
clips accompanied by either positive, negative, or no music. The subjects were then asked to\ud
extrapolate the ending of each film, evaluate the personality and motivations of the main\ud
character(s), and complete a series ofbipolar adjective scales about each scene. The subjects\ud
were brought back a week later for a surprise memory recognition task to test their memory of\ud
certain objects from each scene. Results from the interpretation and adjective rating tasks suggest\ud
that relative to a control group (i.e. no music) positive music led to a more positive interpretations\ud
and adjective ratings while negative music led to a more negative interpretations and adjective\ud
ratings. The results of the "hits" and the "false alarms" from the memory task revealed that\ud
subjects remembered more positive items, regardless of the experimental condition. These\ud
findings are discussed in terms of the schematic influences of music which in turn suggest a\ud
number of ideas for future research
