Effects of Music Genre on Memory and Recollection
Group Members: Chelo France, Sarah McKoy, and John Royal
(Rodriguez-Contreras, City College Seminar 3, 2020)
Have you ever heard that classical music makes you smarter? Well, this comes from a 1993 study, by Rausher, Shaw, and Ky, that founded what is called “The Mozart Effect.” The Mozart Effect is the theory that classical music can promote mental acuity in a way that cannot be matched by other genres of music. However, several studies have been done since that haven’t been able to recreate these findings. Given this, we decided to run a study of our own, but with a different hypothesis: that classical music does not affect the brain differently from other genres of music.
To test our hypothesis, we focused on how music affects memory. To do this, we coded a website that ran a memory test. The test consisted of some survey questions followed by four trials, each with one of the following playing in the background:
- no music
- classical music
- music from their preferred genre
- music from a randomly assigned genre
We got around 40 participants. The results proved our hypothesis wrong. For one, our findings showed that those who listen to music tend to do better at memorizing information over those who study without music. In comparisons to preferred genres over classical music, it shows those who don’t normally listen to music when studying did better with classical music compared to their preferred music. On the other hand, those who normally listen to music did not show much of a change when comparing their preferred music to classical music.
While in quarantine, many of us have found difficulty concentrating on our coursework and performing at optimum levels in school. Our study hoped to provide information that would help people improve in their school performance during these difficult times.
In choosing how to present our findings, we were faced with a dilemma: do we create a poster just as we would’ve had this STEAM Festival been held in person, or do we find a different format that more readily embraces the digital medium instead of simply trying to replicate paper on a screen? The answer we arrived at was simply to do both. That’s why in addition to the poster, we have also prepared an infographic.
Wow! What an interesting topic you guys wrote about! I read about the Mozart Effect in multiple studies, so it was great to see more research done on it. Perhaps one of the most interesting conclusions that was reached in this project was the fact that people’s preferences did not always align with where their performance was highest. This was such an interesting fact. Also, I think this study is relevant to nowadays and distance learning. The Mozart Effect could increase student performance after all.