First Name:
Lindsay
Last Name:
Norris
Major Department:
Music Therapy
Thesis Director:
Cathy McKinney
Date of Thesis:
May 2011
Two experiments investigated the effects of study environment (music vs. silence) on academic memory retrieval. In both, participants were undergraduate volunteers. In the first experiment, 75 participants, 37 in music and 38 in silence, studied and were tested on recall of pairs of words and pairs of nonsense syllables. The 90 participants in the second experiment (music n = 42, i silence n = 48) studied and were tested on the nonsense syllable material only. Students in both groups studied the material to be tested for 10 minutes and under one of two conditions: with instrumental background music (Crossroads by Jim Brickman) or in silence. After a brief distracter during which the researcher presented a 10-minute lecture unrelated to the test materials, a post-test was administered. Results from tests for independent samples in Experiment 1 found no significant difference in the number of correct items on the post-test between study in music and study in silence for either words or nonsense syllables. Further examination revealed a "ceiling effect" whereby more than half of participants in both conditions correctly recalled all word pairs. Therefore, the second experiment utilized only nonsense syllables and increased the number of test items for this type of material. Results from Experiment 2 showed that those who studied in the music condition successfully recalled more nonsense syllable pairs than those who studied in silence. These results suggest that studying with selected music may increase the ability to retrieve novel academic material.