Music & Memory

Judit, Sweta, Fiona, Laura, Floris

Some Questions

• Is studying with music bad?

• Does it make any difference whether you listen to, for instance, rock or classical music?

Outline

• Introduction

• Research Questions

• Hypotheses

• Experiment

• Results

• Conclusion

Research Questions

• What is the influence of music on short-term memory?

• What is the influence of music preference?– i.e. Is there an interaction?

Operationalisations & Definitions

• Classical = Non-modern non-vocal classical music.

• Rock = Non-vocal.

• Short Term Memory = The number of Hungarian words of which the English translation can be learned in a specified amount of time.

Experiment

Learn 20 Words 4 min.

Make test (mixed Words) 2 min.2x

Hypotheses

• The people studying with classical music will do better than the people with rock music.

• People will perform better when listening to the music they prefer.

Something went wrong…

• Rock group insufficiently instructed:– Learned the Hungarian spellings– Therefore lower score on pretest.

• Experiment repeated, Subjects deleted & Groups merged– Tests revealed no significant difference

between the first group (properly instructed part of it) and the second.

Results IPreTest PostTest

Average Difference Per Subject

Estimated Marginal Means of Posttest Score (no. correct)

Test Group (Classical/Rock)

ClassicalRock

Est

ima

ted

Ma

rgin

al M

ea

ns

20.0

15.0

10.0

5.0

0.0

Music Preference

Rock

Classical

Results II• Interaction Preference * Group

Significance: .234

rock

classical

Estimated Marginal Means of Difference between Pre- & Posttest

Test Group (Classical/Rock)

ClassicalRock

Est

ima

ted

Ma

rgin

al M

ea

ns

3.5

3.0

2.5

2.0

1.5

1.0

.5

0.0

Music Preference

Rock

Classical

Results III

• Interaction Pref * DifferencePre-Post

Significance: .367

rock

classical

Results III• Difference in Performance

Test Group (Classical/Rock)

ClassicalRock

Me

an

Diff

ere

nce

be

twe

en

Pre

- &

Po

stte

st2.5

2.0

1.5

1.0

.5

0.0

Significance: .166

Conclusions

• No significant effects were found.– Possible reason: Group size was small.

• Except for instruction effect.

The End

Questions?

Backup Results

Pref. Rock ClassicalGroup Rock Class. Rock Class.

Test Performance

Back-Up I

Pref. Rock ClassicalGroup Rock Class. Rock Class.

Back-Up II

Test Group (Classical/Rock)

ClassicalRock

Co

un

t

30

20

10

0

Music Preference

Classical

Rock

Back-Up III

Posttest Score (no.Pretest Score (no. c

Me

an

16.5

16.0

15.5

15.0

14.5

Back-Up IV

Back-Up V

Back-Up VI

Back-Up VII