Music & Memory

[Pescao6]

I'm planning to make a project about ''the effect of listening to music while trying to memorize words.''
I think that I'll contrast the effects of different styles of music like classical and metal to see if classical helps you memorize more words and metal makes it harder.
For now, I'm just starting to work on my research on exactly how am I going to do this.

Before I begin, I would like to ask some questions:

1. Do you have any advice on how should I conduct my experiment?
2. Do you think I should choose songs that have words or just a soundtrack?
3. How big should my sample for this project be? Would 100 students be enough?
4. Can you mention any variable that could affect my experiment?

[Emily Willingham]

Hi, Pescao6--

These are great questions, all of which would be good to plug into a Google search. Also, I did a quick search of the Science Buddies site and turned up this short project: https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... z&from=TSW

If you go to that page, you'll also find a link entitled "How Many Participants Do I Need?" that might help you in making that decision.

As for whether or not you should choose songs with or without words, one thing you might consider is making that a variable. It would be an interesting question, I think. The list of variables that could affect your experiments is lengthy because it involves human subjects with a broad existing variability in memorization skills, auditory processing ability, etc. Your group size, though, will help efface some of that variation. Setting up a "pre-music" control scenario in which you measure memorization skill in the absence of your introduced music variable and measuring the change that occurs with music introduced for each individual will help control for variation, as well.

Others may pop on here and add to this. Good luck with your project, and please come back to this thread and post if you have further questions, need more help with specifics, or have follow-ups.

Emily

[Pescao6]

An expert on human behavior told me to look up a concept called ''social validity.'' If anything, what can you tell me about it?

New ideas:
Adding to what I previously said. I'm thinking on giving the subjects lists of 15 words, and giving them like 4 minutes to memorize as many as they can. And then 3 minutes to write them. Let's say, I first give them 15 words without any music, then 15 words with classic music, and then 15 words with metal music. As I do this with different groups of people, I know I should probably switch between what goes first - classic or metal. Do think this would be good or should I change something?

To collect more data and a better analysis of my results, if I made a short questionnaire for the people of my sample, what kind of questions could I include?
I was thinking on some like:
- Age
- Gender
- Music Preference
- Do you listen to music while you study?
- Is english your first language?

And, do you think that I would need SRC pre-approval to do this?

[Pescao6]

Bump..

[MelissaB]

Hi,

I can't answer all of your questions, but I can definitely address your experimental deisgn:

You should not only vary which type of music is played first, but also whether you play music or nothing first; people could do consistently worse on the second set just because it's the second set, and if you always do the silent treatment (pun intended!) first, you'll think that any kind of music hurts peoples' concentration.

I would give students more than 15 words if you're going to give them 4 minutes; it's better to give them way more than they could ever memorize than to give them few enough that some people will memorize all 15 in the allotted time.

You might look into different types of memorization and ask students to pick which type of memorization they use on the questionnaire; I can imagine you might see a greater effect in students who use certain types of memorization.

Finally, I would think that you would need pre-approval to do this study but you should ask your teacher. They can tell you exactly what you need to do!

This sounds like a really neat project--good luck with it!

[Pescao6]

When you say types of memorization, are you referring to styles to memorize things? Like memorizing techniques?

Finally, I think the way a phrase this question could have an effect on the experiment. For example, if I mention a few strategies to memorize things that some people maybe wouldn't think about. So, should I just ask something like ''Have you ever tried any strategy to memorize words? If so, mention as many as you can.'' ?

I know that for telephone numbers, some people twist the numbers with letters, names, or symbols so they can memorize the whole number.

Just for later use...
I looked this up and found a few:
· First Letter - first letter mnemonic devices are great for learning a series of items. For example, HOMES is a mnemonic device for the Great Lakes (Lakes Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, and Superior).

· Keyword - a keyword mnemonic device uses words that sound similar and that connect. For instance, “two apples getting married” is a way to remember that Annapolis is the capital city of Maryland.

· Chain - the chain method links words together into a story or a sentence, like with the Columbus rhyme.

· Method of Loci - the Method of loci links information to a location. For example, if you’re trying to remember a list of items you need, such as milk, bread, and eggs, you may visualize the milk being poured onto the bread with a hard boiled egg on top.

PD: If you can mention any other, please do so.

[MelissaB]

Exactly. The method I was thinking of was your 'method of loci' one; I once saw an interview with a man who was extremely good at memorization and he said he used a visual technique to do it. Me, I do something of the chain method--repeat the words over and over in order in my head, though I occasionally use a mnemonic or keyword device.

Are you thinking of giving the students the questionnaire before or after the experiment? I assumed you would be giving it after, so that you would not have to worry about biasing the experiment. The reason I suggest you provide a list (and a short explanation) is that most people won't be able to independently come up with the names for some of these strategies.

I would also ask specifically what technique they used in the experiment and maybe have a separate question about what technique they usually use--for example, it may be very difficult for some people to come up with a mnemonic for a bunch of random words in four minutes, but they might normally do so when they're doing homework and have as much time as they need.

[WJClancey]

Hi,

Regarding "social validity" -- if you're still looking for information -- try Google "What is social validity?" The concept appears to be quite broad, applied to interactions with people outside of experimental situations, e.g., for interacting with job applicants or for interacting with patients.

See: http://stewie83.uniblogs.org/2006/11/25 ... ant-terms/

"Social Validity- refers to the social importance, acceptability, and personal benefit of treatment goals, procedures, and outcomes."

One interpretation in the context of your experiment is that for "social validity," you would test something that relates to how people relate to music normally or puts people in a setting which is similar to how they normally experience music.

My best advice is to simply ask the expert on human behavior who suggested this idea to you to explain what he or she meant.

Bill