Does Music Help Memory?

Summary of Does Music Help Memory?

In this study, the author explores the different explanations to if Music does indeed help memory or if it’s just a wives tale. Some people believe that listening to music helps the memory and can help you better recall information. This is called the “Mozart Effect”. You might think that music is actually a distraction but music that people considered pleasurable increase dopamine, which makes you feel good or happy and promotes leaning through awards.

To finally prove or disprove it, studies conducted in Finland took 73 subjects of age 27 and picked out 3 songs that were neutral and 3 that they really liked out of 14 songs. They were then grouped into 4 different listen patterns, either positive or neutral songs, where each group had the same amount of musicians and non-musicians. The learning part was to memorize 54 pairs of Japanese characters, where one had a positive reward (smiley face) or a negative reward (frowning face).

            The results showed that more musical people learned better with neutral songs and tested better with pleasurable songs. For people without a musical background, the opposite was true. This could be because musical people would pay more attention to the music and analyze it, while non-musical could easily ignore it.

Original Website: http://www.psychologytoday.com/topics/memory?tr=Hdr_Topics