Going Gaga: Investigating, Creating, and Manipulating the Song Stuck in My Head - Essay Example

Article Review: Going Gaga: Investigating, Creating, and Manipulating the Song “Stuck in My Head” Introduction It is a common experience for songs to stick in people’s minds(Bailey and Davidson 18).Given that this experience is common, several beliefs exist regarding the matter. First, many people believe that an obnoxious or annoying song is more likely to linger in a person’s mind than a pleasant one. Secondly, people believe that certain characteristics such as simplicity and repetitiveness make it easier for a song to linger in a person’s mind. Still, it is believed that people who possess certain characteristics such as musical training are more likely to have songs stuck in their minds. In analyzing the occurrence of intrusive songs, age plays a major role in determining the type of song that sticks in a person’s head. A contemporary popular song is more likely to linger in the mind of a young person than in the mind of an older person. Likewise, an older person is likely to find older songs more appealing to them and such songs are more likely to stick in their mind. The purpose of this paper is to support the above thesis by analyzing the article Going Gaga: Investigating, Creating, and Manipulating the Song “Stuck in My Head”. The article reports the findings of five studies that explored the phenomenon of intrusive songs. The paper is organized as follows: for each study, except the last one, there are two paragraphs. The first paragraph summarizes the studywhile the second analyzes it in light of the thesis statement. Analysis Study 1: Intrusive Song Survey In an effort to develop a fuller description of intrusive music, the researchers asked their respondents a series of questions. They asked what the causes of intrusive songs were whether they liked or disliked intrusive songs and how often they experienced intrusive songs(Hyman, Burland and Duskin). They also asked questions touching on the nature of re-experiencing, such as the aspect of the song that played in their heads. The survey involved 299 participants recruited by the snowball method. Their ages ranged 18 and 75 years, with the mean age being 30.13. Participants answered ten questions on their latest intrusive song experiences. One of the questions asked what song was involved. Another question sought to find out whether or not the participant liked the song that stuck in their head. While the range of the ages of the participants is wide enough to capture the role of age in intrusive song experiences, and while their questionnaire had a number of questions that could help record the information, the findings on the aspects are rather dismally reported. For instance, the question on the song that lingered in a respondents mind and its responses do not appear in the list of questions and responses. Even if they did, the information would have been more meaningful only if was accompanied by the ages of respective respondents. Another research has shown that while younger people are more drawn to contemporary music in all its genres, the older generation is more drawn to older music (Bailey and Davidson 20). 29.6% of the participants liked their intrusive songs. 23.8% liked them a lot. Study 2: Intrusive Song Experimental Diary Study Based on their survey findings, the researchers developed a way of inducing intrusive song experiences in participants(Hyman, Burland and Duskin). Sixteen senior psychology undergraduate students, 13 being women and three men, took part in the study. The youngest and oldest among them were aged 21 and 26 years respectively, with the mean age of 22.19. The students participated in the study as part of a seminar on cognition and were well-acquainted with the concepts under investigation. The researchers played a song at the end of every seminar and recorded whether it continued to play in the participants’ heads immediately following the class. Before the next class, the researchers found out if the song returned as an intrusive one. Half the songs were played to the end while the other half were cut short at the second chorus. The ages of the participants in this study are not diverse enough to bring out the role of age in song intrusion. However, the researchers found out that the songs the participants knew and liked often ended up becoming intrusive. The finding reinforced that of the first study. From other research, these being young adults, it is probable that most of them are drawn to popular music of today (Bailey and Davidson 19). For each participant, the researchers calculated the percentage of songs that replayed in their minds immediately after class and the percentage that lingered over the next few days. 61.35% of the participants continued to “hear” songs they knew well and liked, compared to the 40.64% who replayed in their minds songs they neither knew well nor liked. Study 3: Intrusive Song Experiment This was the first laboratory experiment designed to induce intrusive songs. The hidden goal was to induce intrusive songs in the participants without their knowledge(Hyman, Burland and Duskin). By contrast, in Study 2, the participants had been made fully aware the researchers were interested in triggering intrusive songs. Participants in the third study were 89 junior undergraduate students of psychology, 27 men and 62 women. They took part in the study to fulfill a requirement of research. They were aged 18-53, with the mean age being 19.96. Half the participants listened to popular songs by leading female stars. The other half listened to three older songs by The Beatles. The researchers insured against the influence of the current popularity by using different sets of liked and known songs. On the surface, it appears that the age range of the participants was wide enough to demonstrate the role of age in song intrusion. However, a look at the mean age reveals that most participants were young. Still, we are not told anything concerning the ages of the participants who listened to each type of music. Perhaps if the researchers had not limited themselves to college students, they might have captured a wider range of age and shed some light on the influence of age on the type of song that lingers in a persons mind (Bailey and Davidson 24). Understandably, this was not the objective of the study. Nevertheless, the researchers found both types of music were equally likely to replay in the heads of the participants after they listened to them. This finding indicates that there are young people who enjoy music from an earlier generation. Otherwise, The Beatles’ songs, by virtue of their age would not have replayed in the minds of the participants. Study 4: Task Difficulty Influences the Occurrence of Intrusive Songs This study investigated the cognitive load affects the experience of intrusive songs(Hyman, Burland and Duskin). The study involved 139 participants who were junior undergraduate students of psychology at Western Washington University. They ranged between 18 and 23 years, with the average age being 19.08. Participants listened to three songs and rated them, embarked on a puzzle task, then reported the degree to which the songs replayed in their mind during the puzzle task. The researchers sent each participant a follow-up questionnaire twenty-four hours after the experiment. The same three Beatles songs used in Study 3 were used but different popular ones were introduced. The puzzle task was ten minutes of Sudoku. Half the participants were given the easiest of puzzles while the other half were given very challenging ones. All the participants in this study were teenagers and young adults, making it difficult to deduce the role of age in determining the type of song that replayed in the minds of the participants. However, interestingly, the participants who listened to The Beatles songs reported that the songs replayed in their heads as they completed the puzzle, just like their counterparts who listened to contemporary popular music. This finding implies that the listeners of The Beatles songs liked them despite their young age and the songs being rather old(Bailey and Davidson 27). The finding seems to defy rather than support the thesis of this paper that postulates that older songs, such as The Beatles’, are more likely to linger in the heads of the older generation than the younger one. Study 5: Verbal Task Difficulty Influences the Occurrence of Intrusive Songs This was the third laboratory experiment and the last study in the series. The study was an exact replication of the fourth study. It involved 123 junior undergraduate students of psychology at the same university as in Study 4. They were aged between 18 and 23 years. According to the researchers, the experiment served to verify the results obtained from the studies(Hyman, Burland and Duskin). For the purpose of the thesis of this paper, however, it adds little value. Conclusion Of the five studies, the first one came closest to supporting directly the thesis that the age of a person plays a role in determining the type of song that sticks in their head. The participants were aged between 18 and 75 years. A study to test the thesis would have been possible. The mean age is also the highest across the five studies at 30.13. This is an indicator that there were older participants in the study than in the others. Then, there was a question on the song that stuck in the heads of the participants. Had the objective of the researchers been to validate the thesis of this paper, all the researchers would have needed to do was to match the song and the age of the participant (Bailey and Davidson 30). Conclusively, a correlation would have been traced,. Indirects of a possible relationship between the two variables can be deduced from the remaining four studies. Works cited Bailey, Betty and Jane Davidson. "Amateur Group Singing as a Therapeutic Instrument." Nordic Journal of Music Therapy 12(1) (2003): 18-32. Print. Hyman, Ira, et al. "Going Gaga: Investigating, Creating and Manipulating the Song "Stuck in my Head"." Applied Cognitive Psychology 27(2) (2013): 204-215. Print. Read More