Memorizing to Music: Does Music Preference Play a Role in the Possible Effects of Music on Short Term Memory?

University Degree Education and Teaching

Memorizing to Music

Running head: MUSIC PREFERENCE’S EFFECTS IN MEMORIZATION

Memorizing to Music: Does Music Preference Play a Role in the Possible Effects of Music on Short Term Memory?

Northwestern University

Abstract

This study was conducted to ascertain whether or not studying with music of one’s preference had an advantageous effect for students as opposed to studying with music of neutral preference. 25 Northwestern University students, 14 female and 11 male, participated in a repeated subjects design in which each subject studied 3 lists under conditions of no music, music of preference (either rap/hiphop or rock) and neutral music. A 2 X 3 ANOVA yielded no significant interactions. The alpha level used was .05.

Memorizing to Music: Does Music Preference Play a Role in the Possible Effects of Music on Short Term Memory?

Music, an aesthetically pleasing combination of sounds, has become an integral part of most peoples’ lives. There are many varieties of music, jazz, rhythm, blues, rap, rock, pop; the list is infinite. Music affects people in different ways causing variations in mood and arousal. Though many of the effects of listening to harmonious sounds on the human mind have not been explored, there are a few phenomena regarding music and learning that have been investigated; one such phenomenon is the Mozart effect. The Mozart effect is a term used to explain the claim that people perform better on tasks when listening to music composed by Mozart. Rauscher, Shaw, and Ky (1993) indicated that subjects’ performance on spatial tasks was better while listening to music compared to silent conditions. Many people have questioned whether or not listening to music increases intellectual ability; some researchers say that it is possible that the Mozart effect has very little to do with music itself. They propose that the enhanced performance is do to arousal or mood (Thompson, Schellenberg, & Husain, 2001). Music stimuli that is enjoyable might produce a small improvement in the performance of a variety of tasks.

Multiple studies have found that music that contains speech has significant negative effects on participants’ ability to perform tasks (Martin, Wogalter & Forlano, 1988). Known as the irrelevant speech effect, this phenomenon shows that the presentation of speech based irrelevant sound that is to be ignored by subjects actually impairs their task performance (LeCompte, 1995). The irrelevant speech effect results in performance deficits on various cognitive tasks such as free recall, serial recall, and recognition. This is perhaps why music is preferred in college dorms; the continuous noise is blurred out by the music aiding concentration. Tolan and Tehan (2002) found that irrelevant speech had adverse effects on cued recall and that steady-state irrelevant had the same detrimental effect on recall as did changing-state irrelevant speech. When speech based sound is masked by noise, it becomes less disruptive, perhaps because the noise renders the speech unrecognizable (Ellermeier & Hellbruck, 1998). This might be similar to lyrics being masked by instruments.

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Regardless of the possible benefits and/or disadvantages of having music in the background while performing tasks, most people listen to music while doing chores such as cleaning, while exercising, while creating artwork, and even while reading or studying. Background music can be defined as any music playing while the listener’s attention is focused primarily on a task or activity other than listening to the music (Radocy & Boyle, 1988). Students have claimed that they can study and learn more effectively while listening to music; but a solid research base for these claims seems to be lacking. While music appears to ...

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Regardless of the possible benefits and/or disadvantages of having music in the background while performing tasks, most people listen to music while doing chores such as cleaning, while exercising, while creating artwork, and even while reading or studying. Background music can be defined as any music playing while the listener’s attention is focused primarily on a task or activity other than listening to the music (Radocy & Boyle, 1988). Students have claimed that they can study and learn more effectively while listening to music; but a solid research base for these claims seems to be lacking. While music appears to enhance some individuals’ learning, it may be distracting to others. An early study found that when students frequently studied to music, a specific type of music was less likely to impair their performance on reading comprehension tests (Etaugh & Micheals, 1975). Hillard and Tolin (1975) state that if the background music is familiar to the subject, he or she will perform better on the given task compared to when unfamiliar music is present. Tucker and Bushman (1991) found that rock and roll had a detrimental effect on tasks involving mathematical and verbal skills, but it did not have an effect on reading comprehension tasks.

One factor that may affect studying with music is the complexity of music that is listened to. Kiger (1989) found that participants who read passages in the presence of low information load-music performed better than those who read either in silence or with high-information load background music. He suggests that the arousal level the music produces is what affects the performance level; a high-information load may produce tension and anxiety which impair performance of complex tasks while low information-load shows a lowering of arousal improving performance.

Personality type also might play a role in the effects of music. Furnham and Strbac (2002) hypothesized that introverts’ performance on complex cognitive tasks would be more negatively affected by distracters such as music compared to extroverts; the study they conducted confirmed this hypothesis. This conclusion complements the arousal level hypothesis discussed by Kiger as introverts and extroverts and different levels of optimal cortical arousal.

The purpose of this study is to assess whether or not students tend to study better with music they like in the background. From the research previously conducted, a reasonable hypothesis would be that students do study better with their preferred music, possibly because it would lead to a better mood or arousal state or simply because it would be familiar as they probably would have listened to it frequently.

Method

Participants

The subjects included 25 students attending Northwestern University. They were between the ages of 20 and 23; 14 were female and 11 male. Thirteen of the subjects preferred to listen to rap and/or hip hop music while 12 preferred rock music.

Materials

Three separate lists of 59 words each were prepared by opening the dictionary to random pages and picking words. A compact disc of three popular rock songs and three popular hiphop songs was burned to be used in the experiment. All of the songs were in the top ten charts of the current week. The rock songs were Float on by Modest Mouse, Cold Hard Bitch by Jet, and The Reason by Hoostabank. The hiphop songs were Milkshake by Kelis, Dip it Low by Christina Milan, and Yeah by Usher. A stopwatch was used to measure the two minute time interval given to read over the lists.

Procedure

The subjects were tested upon a desk in a room where a cd player was available. They were asked what kind of music they preferred to listen to and whether or not they normally studied with music in the background. The subject was then told the task he or she was to perform: to try to memorize the list of words in front of them and recall them afterwards. The particular list to be studied with a particular condition was randomized. The order of the conditions, studying with no music, with rock music, with hiphop music, was also randomized for each individual to try and take away the possibility that results were due to the subjects just becoming better at learning the lists. The participants were given two minutes to study each list and as much time as they needed to recall as many words as they could.

Results

A 2 X 3 repeated measures ANOVA was performed. Overall, no significant effects were found. The descriptive statistics were as follows: The mean number of words recalled by rap/hiphop-preferring students under conditions of no music was M = 13.54, SD = 1.713, under rock conditions M = 12.54, SD = 1.391, and under rap/hiphop conditions M = 13.08, SD = 1.706. For rock-preferring students the statistics were, M = 13.83, SD = 2.48 under no music conditions, M = 13.83, SD = 3.881 under rock conditions, and M = 12.92, SD = 2.811 under rap/hiphop conditions. The interaction between music preference and music type yielded F (1, 16) = 2.196, MSe = 1.973, p = .127 showing that the interaction was not significant. The alpha level was .05.

Discussion

Like many studies previously conducted, this experiment also did not yield any significant results. The absolute numbers, however, do support the hypothesis; the mean number of words recalled for rock-preferring students while listening to rock music was higher than when the same students studied with hiphop music in the background. Similarly, the mean for rap/hiphop preferring students was higher while listening to hiphop/rap than when listening to rock music. As Fig. 1 shows, both students that normally study with music as well as those that do not normally study with music perform better after having studied with music of their individual preference though the interaction is not significant. This study does not show that listening to our music type of preference actually increases our intellectual capabilities. However, music will always be a part of life providing us with an artistic form of communication that enhances the experience of life. The ways through which music enhances human experience and the mystery of its power over those who enjoy music will continue to be explored by many in the years to come.

References

Ellermeier, W., Hellbruck, J. (1998). Is level irrelevant in “irrelevant speech”? Effects of loudness, signal-to-noise ratio, and binaural unmasking. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 24, 1406-1414.

Etaugh, C., Michals, D. (1975). Effects on reading comprehension of preferred music and frequency of studying to music. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 36, 1265-1266.

Hillaiard, O.M., Tolin, P. (1979). Effect of familiarity with background music on performance of simple and difficult reading comprehension. Perceptual and Motor skills, 49, 713-714.

Furnham, A., & Strbac, L. (2002). Music is as distracting as noise: The differential distraction of background music and noise on the cognitive test performance of introverts and extraverts. Ergonomics, 45, 203-217.

Kiger, D.M. (1989). Effects of music information load on a reading comprehension task. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 69. 531-534.

LeCompte, D.C. (1995). An irrelevant speech effect with repeated and continuous background speech. Psychometric Bulletin and Review, 3, 391-397.

Rauscher, F.H., Shaw, G.L., & Ky, K.N. (1993). Music and spatial task performance. Nature, 365, 611.

Thompson, W.F., Schellenberg, E.G., & Husain, G. (2001). Arousal, mood, and the Mozart effect. Journal of Music Therapy, 12, 248-251.

Tolan, G.A., Tehan, G. (2002). Testing feature interaction: Between-stream irrelevant speech effects in immediate recall. Journal of Memory and Language, 46, 562-585.

Tucker, A., Bushman, B. (1991). Effects of rock and roll music on mathematical, verbal, and reading comprehension performance. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 72, 942.