Introduction
The current paper presents a literature review on the publications considering the interaction of music and memory. It reviews five articles published no early than the year 2017, which allows achieving high modernity and consistency with the contemporary research mainstream. The articles included are research studies in psychology published in peer review journals. In the chosen papers, the samples of participants are quite diverse: three types of research studied students, one research had two groups – young and older adults, and another one tested older adults both from typically developed and clinical populations with Alzheimer’s disease (AD).
The purpose of this review is to analyze the background of the research field and to direct future investigation. It is essential to be aware of what type of memory is elicited in the experimental task processing (Nguyen & Grahn, 2017). Moreover, music as a stimulus is a vague concept, and researchers chose a particular variant of musical material that must be taken into account in interpretation (Deason, Strong, Tat, Simmons-Stern, & Budson, 2019). The current paper demonstrates that the variety of methodology in different experiments determines scattered results, hindering generalization in the field, and presents the hypothesis of the planned study.
Studies on Typically Developed Young Adults
Many studies aim to explain the controversy observed in the research of music and memory. Suchwise, Nguyen, and Grahn (2017) assume that the previous findings were diverse because each study tested different kinds of memories. The authors develop a methodology to test recall, recognition, association, and general memory. The study shows that lower arousal correlates with higher recall and recognition, along with no effect of background music for associative memory and overall verbal memory. This research shows that the effect is not the same for different memory types. Overall, the empirical findings in this study provide a new understanding of the effect of music on memory.
Some research on working memory considers students’ individual differences in music impact. Christopher and Shelton (2017) argue that music influence is not the same for different people because of the differences in working memory capacity. They conducted an experiment where they show how listening to music is more detrimental for students with lower working memory potential. Therefore, the research is of enormous significance for the understanding of individual differences in the connection between memory and music. A serious weakness of this study is that the stimuli used in the experiment are only pop songs, which potentially cause biased results.
Some studies within the behavioral paradigm consider music as a reward in task performance. Ferreri and Rodriguez‑Fornells (2017) study the effect of music on episodic memory. The authors work within the neurobehavioral approach and suggest the activation of the dopaminergic system as the main reason for changes in performance. In their study, the music, which was evaluated by the participants as more rewarding, was more likely to be better recognized and remembered. Thus, this research provides insights into the neuronal mechanisms of music’s influence on episodic memory.
Studies with Diverse Samples of Participants
The participants of the three previous types of research were students, although it is crucial to consider different age groups to make reasonable generalizations. Ratovohery, Baudouin, Gachet, Palisson, and Narme (2018) compared the effect of music on the episodic memory of younger and older adults. The older group better remembered sung lyrics than spoken ones, although in general, the younger group outperforms the older one. Therefore, the research contributes to the understanding of the interaction of age with music and memory. One major drawback of this approach is that, except for age, the younger and the older groups differ in other factors. That is why caution must be taken when deriving conclusions from such studies.
Research in clinical settings has also provided insights into the effects of music. Deason et al. (2019) focused on the functioning of implicit and explicit memory in people with mild AD. The author implemented a receiver operating characteristic (ROC) paradigm to investigate the diverse contribution of familiarity and recollection and demonstrated that familiarity with music is critical for the performance of the implicit memory of people with AD. As for explicit memory, the musical condition is shown to worsen the performance of both healthy and AD groups. These findings add significantly to the understanding of how music can approach aid therapy for people with AD. However, the main weakness of the study is again the materials used in the testing because, as the authors also admit, the songs were probably too difficult to perceive.
Discussion and Hypothesis
The reviewed studies focus on different memory types and different musical stimuli. The relation between music and memory is vital for modern society because it will potentially explain which approach is better for productive activity. Some researchers consider memorizing the music the participants listen to, while others focus on cognitive task performance. Moreover, music can differ in several parameters, and one needs to choose a theoretical methodology to identify which parameters are essential for the processes investigated. It is clear from the review that the effect of music depends on the kind of task and the type of memory involved in the experimental procedure. The planned study will consider these factors in order to clarify how these factors influence memory performance.
Further study will focus on the effects of classical and pop music on the memory of college students. The hypothesis suggests that memorizing with classical music increases retrieval in comparison with pop music. The participants will be set into two groups and will remember a list of words while listening to either classical or pop music. Each list will consist of 10 words and will be presented for 30 seconds. Thus, the study will investigate how different types of music influence information retrieval in college students.
References
Christopher, E. A., & Shelton, J. T. (2017). Individual differences in working memory predict the effect of music on student performance.Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 6(2), 167–173. Web.
Deason, R. G., Strong, J. V., Tat, M. J., Simmons-Stern, N. R., & Budson, A. E. (2019). Explicit and implicit memory for music in healthy older adults and patients with mild Alzheimer’s disease.Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology, 41(2), 158–169. Web.
Ferreri, L., & Rodriguez-Fornells, A. (2017). Music-related reward responses predict episodic memory performance.Experimental Brain Research, 235(12), 3721–3731. Web.
Nguyen, T., & Grahn, J. A. (2017). Mind your music: The effects of music-induced mood and arousal across different memory tasks.Psychomusicology: Music, Mind, and Brain, 27(2), 81–94. Web.
Ratovohery, S., Baudouin, A., Gachet, A., Palisson, J., & Narme, P. (2018). Is music a memory booster in normal aging? The influence of emotion.Memory, 26(10), 1344–1354. Web.