Examining the Effects of Music with Words on Long Term Memory Encoding

An article that appeared in JASS, issue 2019Many students listen to music while studying without knowing the effects that this could cause. The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of listening to music with words while studying on long term memory recall. It was hypothesized that listening to music with words while studying would reduce the number of words remembered on a long term memory recall test, as opposed to exposure to music without lyrics while studying. Fifty participants were included in the study and were randomly assigned to one of two treatment groups. One treatment group listened to music with words while attempting to memorize words and their definitions then after listened to music without words while memorizing different words and their definitions. The other treatment group was exposed in the opposite order. Physiological data was collected before the first treatment, during the first treatment, between the treatments, and during the second treatment. The physiological variables recorded were heart rate, galvanic skin response, and breathing rate. The data was analyzed by running a t-test comparing each treatment to their respective baseline. The t-test test comparing EDA values and respiratory values showed no significant difference between variables; however, heart rate did show statistically significant differences when listening to music without lyrics first. In addition, the data showed that overall participants were able to recall more definitions when listening to music without lyrics, though this was not statistically significant. More research needs to be done to get a clearer idea of how music affects cognition during studying