Effects of Music with and without Lyrics on Visuospatial Memory
Faculty Mentor(s) Name(s)
Eric Rindal
Abstract
Although there is an abundance of research regarding the effects of music on verbal memory, less has been done to investigate the effects of music on visuospatial memory. In a study by Iwanga and Ito (2002), participants were told to memorize ten different asymmetric patterns while listening to either vocal music, instrumental music, natural sounds, or silence. They found that music did not interfere with performance on the spatial memory task. Another study investigated the effects of non-vocal background music on visuospatial learning and found that performance on visuospatial tasks was worse for both immediate and delayed recall when the task was paired with background music than with silence (Echaide et al., 2019). This suggests that background music might have a detrimental effect on visuospatial learning. The objective of the present study aims to further investigate the impact that different music conditions have on visuospatial memory. Participants are instructed to complete a matching game while listening to one of seven music conditions. The music conditions include “Crazy Train” by Ozzy Osbourne with lyrics, “Crazy Train” by Ozzy Osbourne without lyrics, “Wagon Wheel” by Darius Rucker with lyrics, “Wagon Wheel” by Darius Rucker without lyrics, brown noise, “Bagatelle no. 25. A minor” by Beethoven, and silence. The matching game is a 5x4, black and white matching game obtained from the website memozor.com. Participants were measured with two dependent measures: 1) the number of moves it took to complete the game and 2) the amount of time it took to complete the game. This process is repeated until participants have been exposed to all seven music conditions. We expect that performance will be worst when the game is paired with music with lyrics, slightly better when paired with music without lyrics, and the best when paired with the brown noise and silence.
Start Date
27-3-2024 9:00 AM
End Date
27-3-2024 9:50 AM
Location
Magnolia Ballroom
Effects of Music with and without Lyrics on Visuospatial Memory
Magnolia Ballroom
Although there is an abundance of research regarding the effects of music on verbal memory, less has been done to investigate the effects of music on visuospatial memory. In a study by Iwanga and Ito (2002), participants were told to memorize ten different asymmetric patterns while listening to either vocal music, instrumental music, natural sounds, or silence. They found that music did not interfere with performance on the spatial memory task. Another study investigated the effects of non-vocal background music on visuospatial learning and found that performance on visuospatial tasks was worse for both immediate and delayed recall when the task was paired with background music than with silence (Echaide et al., 2019). This suggests that background music might have a detrimental effect on visuospatial learning. The objective of the present study aims to further investigate the impact that different music conditions have on visuospatial memory. Participants are instructed to complete a matching game while listening to one of seven music conditions. The music conditions include “Crazy Train” by Ozzy Osbourne with lyrics, “Crazy Train” by Ozzy Osbourne without lyrics, “Wagon Wheel” by Darius Rucker with lyrics, “Wagon Wheel” by Darius Rucker without lyrics, brown noise, “Bagatelle no. 25. A minor” by Beethoven, and silence. The matching game is a 5x4, black and white matching game obtained from the website memozor.com. Participants were measured with two dependent measures: 1) the number of moves it took to complete the game and 2) the amount of time it took to complete the game. This process is repeated until participants have been exposed to all seven music conditions. We expect that performance will be worst when the game is paired with music with lyrics, slightly better when paired with music without lyrics, and the best when paired with the brown noise and silence.