The use of familiar and unfamiliar music as a musical mnemonic with music and nonmusic majors.

Abstract: The purpose of the study was to examine the use of music as a mnemonic device, the effect of familiar and unfamiliar music on a serial word recall task, and performance differences between musicians and nonmusicians using mnemonic devices on a serial recall task. One hundred and eighty college students from a large midwestern university served as subjects. Subjects were assigned, according to their availability, to three groups of music majors and three groups of nonmusic majors. Independent variables consisted of treatment modes (no music, familiar music, and unfamiliar music), and subject types ( music major and nonmusic major). The dependent varible was the recall of monosyllabic words. Statistical analysis of the data was conducted using a two-way analysis of variance. A significant difference was found in recall of the lists of words between music majors and nonmusic majors (p < .01). Similarly, a significant difference was found between no music/unfamiliar music and no music/familiar music (p < .01) presentation modes. No significant difference was found between familiar music/unfamiliar music (p < .05) presentation modes. Music majors, performed better on the sequential word recall task than did the nonmusic majors. The results also reveal that the use of music, either familiar or unfamiliar, as a mnemonic device did not facilitate word recall.

Keyword(s): Mnemonic-device, familiarity, musician.

Zurück | Weiter