Abstract
Abstractly thinking about students study habits and ways of increasing short-term spatial memory have been studied by many researchers. In this experiment participants spatial memory is tested after listening to music and their ability to recall visual stimuli produced in the form of a slide show. Results from the experiment have been deemed statistically significant for the different music types played during the experiment.
INTRO:
Educators of centuries past have been in search of the holy grail of what it means to increase the memory centers of our brains. Memory is one of the most complex phenomena that our brains are able to demonstrate. One way of defining memory is our ability to store and recall of information presented to us. However our memory isn’t as neatly sorted from visual and audio provocations. The way we memorize or collect and edit events is sparsely selective and constructed from not only us but also the world around us. Our memories can grow to boundless capacities, yet still full of holes where events are distorted and riddled with issues with our retrieval systems.
When thinking explicitly about your abilities of information processing there are three main stages to the process: encoding, storage, and retrieval. During the encoding process we combine information that was gathered through audio and visual stimuli. According to Kirtley and Tatler when you’re focused on the task at hand, other non-factors, or irrelevant information can be overlooked (2016). Whether you overlook this information intentionally or unintentionally, it happens. In their experiment subjects where given specific tasks that required concentration, participants later asked about items in the room to verify who was able remember seeing items not in the concentrated task. That’s how you’re able to remember where you had lunch today, but can’t remember every word in your textbook that you read. Storage centers are comprised of a 3-part model proposed by psychologists Richard Atkinson and Richard Shriffin (1968). In this model memory storage is consolidated into sensory registers where information is stored using from the environment stimulus and registers memory for working memory processing. Working memory also called short-term is the recipient of information received from sensory registers whereas repetition certain tasks are stored for long-term storage. The retrieval or recollection of information stored is in response to cues given during different processes or activities.
According to Miller, limitations to the working memory (first 15-30 seconds) of the average persons recall ability is 7±2 items of information in their respective serial order (1956). Items are more easily recalled by what Miller referred to as chunking information for easy recall. As digits and words are presented Miller has given them quantitative counts to show their value for memory tests. Digits recall is around seven and six for words (p 81- 97).
Students whom passively listen to music while studying have a higher memory recall and multitasking abilities (Schellenburg 2004). In the article Schellenburg investigates students being taught while listening to music can greatly increase a person’s ability to use and process working memory. This is also why some people use music to concentrate. This experiment closely aligned that of the Mozart Effect (Jenkins 2001) where listening to Classical music temporarily increased participants spatial memory. All of these articles combined led to us making the hypothesis that classical music will have a higher effect on memory recall of the stimulus presented in our experiement.Type equation here.
METHODS:
Participant
My team and I tested voluntary participants, whom were students at Brooklyn College.
Procedure
The experiment was conducted in two settings: indoors, outdoors. The indoor settings were a study room in Brooklyn College Library and the outdoors trials were ran on Brooklyn College Campus. The participants were seated at a table with a laptop in front of them. The trial started when the participant clicked on one of three links presented on the screen. Each link was assigned to either one of the independent variables. The participants then look at the laptop screen for the duration of the played song. As the song is playing, 8 slides were presented on the screen. After the trial was finished, the participants then report what they remembered from the slideshow on an exam. The exams consisted of multiple items, including the 8 presented in the trials, and were infamous logos. My team and I then took the collected results to analyze and compare.
Materials
The materials utilized in this experiment were paper, pencils laptop, headphones (provided by us or participants personal), chair, table, tape, and compensation to be given.
RESULTS:
The results of this experiment came from 2×3 between subjects factorial design, hence resulting in a six conditions. The dependent variable was memory recall of stimuli presented in the slideshow. There was an interaction between the types of music, contrary to what we anticipated in our hypothesis of classical music having the highest outcome. See Figure 1 below for visuals. The between subjects ANOVA resulted in significant findings from our participants. Data was collected from 18 persons ranging from 18- 50. The music score returned our only significant ANOVA F (17,2)= 4 , p < .05 depicted in SPSS output in Figure 2. The indoor and outdoor setting we used as environmental change didn’t render the results we had anticipated.
F (17,1) =3.048, p > .05. When comparing the setting to the music types to the setting rendered an ANOVA of F(17, 1)=1.33 p > .05 making it irrelevant in regard of trials during the experiment. Heavy metal music had turned out the worst in both indoors and outdoors trials shown in Figure 3.
DISCUSSION:
During the process of this experiment issues that arose were how many items to present and for how long was the stimulus to be displayed. The items chose for the slideshows were specific nice logos that resembled other popular icons. We opted to reduce the number of items presented to keep on par with Miller’s 7±2 model. The music of choice came from an alternative choice in genre. Pop music too many popular songs to choose from, whereas heavy metal music none of the team of experimenters where privy to background knowledge of songs. The musical preference was taking in the initial experiment, but not factored into the one-way ANOVA performed at the data collection ceased. It would’ve added no value to the experiment nor gave any adverse interactions or main effects.