Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

I am trying to do research, could you help me with some of the things I should look up. I have Cognitive Learning, Memory.....


Cathy

Cathy,

I am glad to hear that you wish to pursue a research project within the psychological sciences. I am unsure to what of complexity you are looking for in a project. Before beginning a project in the behavioral sciences, it is essential to do solid background research. It appears that you are interested in studying the effect of music on memory. Find a psychology textbook and familiarize yourself with fundamental concepts in the study of memory.

Here is a link to a relatively simple journal article titled "The Effects of Music on Memory". http://clearinghouse.missouriwestern.ed ... ts/230.php This may be a great start to learning about this topic. You may notice that you are able to change a few variables and make the study answer yourquestion. Before conducting your study, you will need to determine whether you are interested in short-term memory or long-term memory. In addition to what type of music you will play in your experiment. Since this is in regards to studying, you may want to observe the retention after a few days. Possible by using some sort of test.

Hopefully this information gets you started! If you can provide me with more details I will then be able to answer specific questions and make sure that you have a solid project.

Best,
Travis Sigafoos

Thank you, I will star t and get back to you soon.

Hi Cathy,
Travis made some really great suggestions before me. To add on, I think it would also be interesting to talk a little about brain waves; it sounds like what you're doing research on is verging on the field of music therapy. I suggest checking out this page http://stress.about.com/od/tensiontamer ... herapy.htm just so you can get an overall idea of how music therapy works. If you'd like, you can create your own experiment where you have "clients" (student volunteers) who you can test different types of music on--see what the correlation is between the music and the mood--and test how well the retained certain information after a few days. To take care of the variables (personality type, memory strength, etc), you may want to create your own "test" (a short passage, a detailed picture, etc) so that every student will be trying to learn the same thing. There will still be many other variables, but this will help take care of a few. Don't forget to also set up a control!

Good luck!

Best,
ktsshao

Hi,

This is an interesting project. Travis and Ktsshao have made some really good suggestions for your background reading and experimental design. This type of project is challenging because it’s difficult to measure the effect of music on anything, but a good experimental design will solve that problem. I would like to add that since you will be working with human subjects, you will need to get pre-approval to do the project and you will need informed consent from each participant. Here is the information from the Science Buddies website on this topic.

https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... ects.shtml

Good luck!

Donna Hardy