The Effectiveness of Music as a Mnemonic Device on Recognition Memory - Research Proposal Example

The Effectiveness of Music as a Mnemonic Device on Recognition Memory Abstract Autobiographical memory has for years been an object of research for psychologists, who have been studying it in various aspects of functioning. Similarly, numerous studies have been devoted to investigation of connections between music and autobiographical memory, because music is commonly considered to be a powerful mnemonic instrument, helpful both in the stage of encoding and memorizing and the stage of autobiographical memories retrieval. Studies devoted to this topic researched it in different aspects such as effect of peak experiences on music perception and memories retrieval, relations between music, emotions and autobiographical memory, effect of age on autobiographical memory performance while listening to music and others. In the current research proposal, one more facet of the topic is offered for investigation: it is offered to conduct an empirical research of interrelations between gender and autobiographic memories retrieval. Music has been long studied by researchers in different areas, and particularly in the area of psychology; similarly, the autobiographical memory and its properties has been studies thoroughly in its various aspects. Moreover, much attention has been granted to researches and experiments throwing light to connection and relations between music and autobiographical memory. Autobiographical memory as a complex memory system rests upon the combination of two memory structures – episodic and semantic memory (Williams et al, 2008). It is a wide base of memories of one’s personal life combining personal experiences and general knowledge of the world around, allowing an individual to store and recollect information in his or her mind. “Individuals recall an autobiographical memory when a portion of the knowledge of their lives becomes temporarily activated” (Cady et al, 2008). However, human abilities to recall and retrieved autobiographic memories and the quality of data recorded in the brain aren’t universal and equal for all people: these characteristics depend on culture (Cohen & Gunz, 2002), personal identity, effects of psychological trauma, age or gender. Human memory incorporates three main stages of information processing: information encoding, sorting and retrieval (McLeod, 2007). Thus these three stages depend greatly on the external factors named above. However, in the last decades, music has been studied a lot in terms of its effect on memory processes. Nowadays, due to researches, music is considered to be an efficient mnemonic device (Schulkind et al, 1999), as numerous experiments revealed its direct effect on the capability to either encode or retrieved information needed. In marketing, music is used in order to enhance memorizing of products; preliterate nations preserved folklore and cultural information (Rubin, 1995); and – generally – researches show that people tend to memorize text better, if it is supported by music (Wallace, 1994). Although, music is better memorized predominantly in the system of short-term memory, it is also documented in researches (Bartlett & Snelus, 1980) that music belongs to the types of information, which can be stored in human memory for a very long time. Thus music has been proved to be closely connected with memory processes and produce impact on them, - the relations which has been the object for numerous researches. Shulkind et al (1999) focused their research on relations between music and memory in terms of memory’s durability, studying for how long memories of popular music belonging to various life periods are stored in human memory. According to the research, young adults tend to remember popular songs and information about them better than older adults. Moreover, this and many other studies unfold the relations between music, memory and emotions. Emotional component is a rather important part of memories’ retrieval process, assisting in recalling personal experiences. It is also referred to as a part of autobiographical memory system (Conway & Pleydell-Pearce, 2000), as – it is rather obvious – emotions we feel while listening to certain pieces of music (if those are familiar) are very likely to come from the past together with memories. In the course of empirical study, Janata et al. (2007) revealed emotional nature of autobiographical memories evoked by music. The study investigating reactions of young people to different music pieces from the period when they were from seven to nineteen years old showed that one third of songs evoked autobiographical memories, and others evoked positive emotions and associations. “The evocation of autobiographical memories and associated emotions by music counts among the most poignant experiences associated with music” (Janata, 2009). This means that human memory, human emotions and music are intertwined in memories’ extraction process. It is generally accepted among the scholars that emotional response occurring in people in the process of music listening is mainly triggered by the association and connection of a certain music piece to a remarkable event (a part of their personal experience) (Lowis, 1998). However, Meyer (1956) mentioned that the evoked emotions – like sadness, cheer, nostalgia and many others – are not connected with music in the sense of structure and composition, yet they are extramusical and are based on associations. Positive impact of music was also studied with regards to mental or brain disorders like Alzheimer’s disease, dementia, brain injury etc. Patient suffering from multiple sclerosis and thus experiencing difficulties in learning and memorizing were also examined in terms of efficiency of music as a mnemonic instrument (Moore et al, 2006). However, research results showed efficiency of music mnemonics only in those people who are at earlier stages of disease and whose brains are less impaired. Gerontological studies are particularly interested in these properties of music, as plausible and comprehensive data might be of great use in treating elderly people. Several researches were conducted in the area of relations between Alzheimer’s disease and music. El Haj et al (2012) investigated effect of music on people having mild Alzheimer’s diseases, resting upon the study of Janata et al (2007): whereas autobiographical memories possess emotional nature, some participants of the study were given an opportunity to choose their favorite music for listening. The evidences of the study indicate higher autobiographical memory performance in those who listened to their chosen music. It addition, relations between music and autobiographical memory have been studied from the perspective of peak experiences (Lowis, 1998). People aged 21-70 were compared in their sensibility towards calm and upbeat music with regards to their previous peak experiences – either passive or active. As the results show, there’s a significant correlation between the level of sensibility of the subjects and their memories of previous peak experiences. Moreover, in most cases, music evoked in people memories of certain events (Lowis, 1998), that also confirms the hypothesis of music’s role in evocation of autobiographical memories. Generally, interrelations between music and autobiographical memories have been widely discussed in connection to such demographic variables as age, health condition (for instance, for AD patients), marital and social status and others. However, it is necessary to pay attention to gender peculiarities existing in autobiographical memory functioning. It is now completely obvious that autobiographical memory includes strong and influential emotional component, which often plays essential role in retrieval of memories from one’s own past. Due to this quality of autobiographical memory, there are certain differences in mnemonic abilities of men and women, which come out of differences in the psyche structure and the way of thinking. Mainly, the differences are considered to be the result of different levels of emotionality in representatives of two genders. Women often tend to have “better recall of autobiographical memories than men” (Pastorino & Doyle-Portillo, 2011). This especially relevant for emotionally loaded memories and events. According to Pastorino and Doyle-Portillo (2011), this tendency originates also from childhood when parents talk to children about past events: it turns out that girls are encouraged to discuss past events in a more emotional and detailed manner than boys. In other words, the ways in which children’s memories are recalled differ in boys and girls, resulting in diverse perceptions of memories in the future. Adult females eventually demonstrate higher elaborateness in their autobiographical reports, which is also influenced by gender differences in communication and language. However, some gender-related studies assume that men can be as emotional in their autobiographical reports when facing intimacy and a trusted conversation partner rather than a stranger by whom the participants of the previous studies were interviewed (Fivush, 2014). But notwithstanding this fact, due to general theoretical framework, women are proved to perform differently in terms of autobiographical memory. Taking these facts into account and considering scarce data concerning the issue, in this research proposal, I would like to offer the study related to interconnection between music and autobiographical memory with regards to gender aspect. It is rather likely, that woman – considering their higher level of emotionality – may perform better in autobiographic memory tasks in connection to music than men. In the previous studies of music and autobiographical memories retrieval it was clarified, that people’s ability to recall event from the past is intensified and enhanced by listening to music, as music often evokes certain emotions and associations. Moreover, evidences show that this ability might be influenced – to certain extent - by various variables of the participants of the experiments like age, familiarity with music pieces, education etc. Thereby, it is reasonable to assume that individual abilities to recall autobiographical memories while listening to music might vary depending on gender. In the proposed research it should be investigated, whether gender differences produce impact on evocation of autobiographical memories and their degree of detail while listening to music. Thus the possible hypothesis of the study would be that females are likely to perform better in recalling autobiographical memories while listening to music. In order to obtain more objective data, the research should be conducted empirically, involving the representative selection of people. As the key variable of the research is gender, the sample should be constituted by both male and female participants belonging to different age, occupation and marital status groups. The age categories are to involve participants from young adult age to older adult age and, probably, I would rather follow the strategy used by Lowis (1998) and invite men and women aged from 21 to 70 years. The number of participants is dependable, yet the numbers of male and female participants should be equal. It is an empirical study, so the data should be obtained in the course of experiments and analyzed. The set of music recordings should be assembled of popular songs belonging to various styles and time periods, yet the recordings should be widely known and – probably – chosen based on Billboard charts. The procedure of the proposed research will include – first of all – filling in of a specially developed questionnaire based on music listening. In order to ensure completely comfortable atmosphere for the participants, it is desirable to conduct the practical part of the experiment somewhere outside the lab. The surrounding needs to be informal, so I would like to offer inviting the participants to a small cozy conference room where they will be able to feel themselves at ease. Furthermore, as far as the premise is to be rather small, the experiment is to be held in several sessions, again, involving equal numbers of male and female participants. In case the size of sample includes up to 30 people of each gender, the experiment will be held in 5 sessions with 6 males and 6 females being questioned at a time. The participants are to listen to a set of music pieces in headphones (so that they are not distracted or interrupted), then filling in the questionnaire and recording the memories the music evokes. It is also possible that the participants try to recall names of the songs and artists. Thus the questionnaires should contain two main sections: one should contain spaces for artists’ names and titles of songs; another part could include two main questions (some additions are possible). The two questions could be “What kind of emotions does this piece evoke, to your mind (positive/negative/neutral)?” and “Does this piece evoke some of your memories? If yes, please, describe your memories”. After that, the obtained data should be analyzed based on qualitative and quantitative criteria – this will form the second stage of the research procedure. Possibly, a special index could be created in order to frame and formalize the results. The results obtained from the first question could be processed with help of quantitative analysis and further transformed into percentage. The data from the second section should be analyzed in a more careful way, as these are free-answer questions. Thus the quality and explicitness of answers should be analyzed with – possibly – some universal criteria developed for evaluation. Contrastive analysis of the data would be conducted in order to either support or refute the hypothesis of the study. According to my expectations and due to theoretical basis, the research hypothesis is to be supported by the results of the testing. In addition, as an addition aspect of the study, it is possible to investigate how presence or absence of vocal/lyrics affects evocation of autobiographical memories in men and women. It has been commonly assumed by the studies that text is rather helpful in memorizing music. Thus it would be interesting to investigate to what extent text assists in retrieving of memories, as texts are likely to produce positive impact on the participants’ performance. In this case, the second hypothesis could be that text enhances autobiographical memories retrieval in men and women. Then, of course, the set of music pieces offered for listening should include both instrumental and vocal compositions. References: Bartlett, J. C., Snelus, P. (1980). Lifespan memory for popular songs. American Journal of Psychology, 93, 551-560. Cady, E. T., Harris, R. J., Knappenbergen, J. B. (2008). Using music to cue autobiographical memories of different lifetime periods. Society and Education, Music and Psychology Research, vol. 36(2), 157-178. Retrieved December 1, 2014 from: http://www.k-state.edu/psych/research/documents/CadyHK08pdf.pdf Cohen, D., Gunz, A. (2002). "As Seen by the Other ... : Perspectives on the Self in the Memories and Emotional Perceptions of Easterners and Westerners". Psychological Science 13 (1): 55–59. Conway, M. A, Pleydell-Pearce, C. W. (2000). The Construction of Autobiographical Memories in the Self-memory System. Psychological Review, 107, 261-288. El Haj, M., Postal, V., Allain, P. (2012). Music Enhances Autobiographical Memory in Mild Alzheimer’s Disease. Educational Gerontology, 38, 30–41. Fivush, R. (2014). Gendered Narratives: Elaboration, Structure, and Emotion in Parent-Child Reminiscing across the Preschool Years. In Thompson, C. P., Herrmann, D. J., Bruce, D., Read J. D., Payne, D. J. (Eds.) Autobiographical Memory: Theoretical and Applied Perspectives. Psychology Press. Janata, P. (2009). The neural architecture of music-evoked autobiographical memories. Cerebral Cortex, 19, 2579–2594. Janata, P., Tomic, S. T., & Rakowski, S. K. (2007). Characterization of music-evoked autobiographical memories. Memory, 15, 845–860. Lowis, M. J. (1998). Music and Peak Experiences: an Empirical Study. Mankind Quarterly, vol. 39(2), 203-224. Print. McLeod, S. A. (2007). Stages of Memory - Encoding Storage and Retrieval. Retrieved December 1, 2014 from: http://www.simplypsychology.org/memory.html Meyer, L. B. (1956). Emotion and meaning in music. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Moore, K. S., Peterson, D. A., O’Shea, J., McIntosh, G. C., Thaut, M. H. (2006). The Effectiveness of Music as a Mnemonic Device on Recognition Memory for People with Multiple Sclerosis. Journal of Music Therapy, XLV (3), 2006, 307-329. Retrieved December 1, 2014 from: http://www.psychologytoday.com/files/attachments/39463/mooreks-jmt-fall08-xlv3.pdf Pastorino, E., Doyle-Portillo, S. (2011). What is Psychology? Cengage Learning, 238-239. Print. Rubin, D. C. (1995). Memory in oral traditions: the cognitive psychology of epic, ballads, and counting-out rhymes. NY: Oxford University Press. Schulkind, M. D., Hennis, L. K., Rubin, D. C. (1999). Music, emotion and autobiographical memory: They’re playing your song. Memory & Cognition, 1999, 27(6), 948-955. Print. Wallace, W. T. (1994). Memory for music: Effect of melody on recall of text. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory & Cognition, 20, 1471-1485. Williams, H. L., Conway, M. A., & Cohen, G. (2008). Autobiographical memory. In G. Cohen & M. A. Conway (Eds.), Memory in the Real World (3rd ed., pp. 21-90). Hove, UK: Psychology Press. Read More