Abstract
This study will evaluate how different background conditions influence college students short term memory recall. 150 college students will be randomly divided into three treatment groups using random sampling (n=50) in this within subjects – repeated measures design. Classical music, white noise, and silence will be the three levels of the independent variable used. A powerpoint containing three lists of uncommon nouns will be viewed by the participants while listening to the three background conditions. After viewing and memorizing each list, participants will write down as many of the nouns that they remember. Participants will be given scores based on the number of nouns they were able to correctly recall. Scores from each of the background conditions will be compared to determine the effects of different background conditions on short term memory recall. These results may be able to impact the study habits used by college students, as well as the teaching techniques used by college professors.
Effects of Background Conditions on Short Term Memory Recall in College Students
Introduction
Recalling information from your short term memory is something that college students either struggle with or excel at. Whether it be memorizing processes, having the ability to recall important dates, or even recite specific facts are all things that could be expected from college students. These expectations also happen to rely on the students short term memory and their ability to correctly recall the information that they’ve learned. Varying the background conditions in learning environments, such as lecture halls, the library, or tutoring centers can sometimes be seen to either improve or negatively impact college students ability to recall information. Silence, white noise, and classical music are the most commonly used background conditions. Silence is generally defined as the absence of sound and artifacts relating to sound and is normally seen as the ideal learning condition, yet some studies show that instrumental background noise can help to improve memory recall. White noise is defined as, “a flat spectrum over the range of audible frequencies between 20Hz to 20kHZ”, according to Herweg and Bunzeck (2015). In most if not all of these studies, classical music is often referred to as music performed by Mozart. Clarity, balance, and transparency can be found within his music, which are very important traits of classical music. If different background conditions can help students with their short term memory recall, then perhaps professors and staff can utilize this knowledge and help to improve their students grades and overall class performance.
Variables
Background condition and memory recall are the variables in this study. Background condition is the independent variable and is defined as the noise or sound being heard within the background of an area or space. Background condition will be manipulated in three ways.One background condition will be instrumental music, another will be white noise, and the third will be silence. Memory recall is the dependent variable and is defined as the number of nouns recalled correctly.
Summary
Understanding how background conditions affect short term memory recall in college students is something that is important to research. Knowing what is a positive or negative approach to studying and retaining information would help to aide professors and how they approach their lectures. It would also help students improve their studying techniques and in turn earn better grades on their assignments.
Review of literature
Brief history
In today’s world, students are often told that studying with instrumental music on in the background can help to improve how much information they’re able to retain and in turn recall come exam time. Psychologists have been researching this topic for decades and continue to do so today.
An experimental study performed by Norris, Baddeley, and Page (2004) using four irrelevant sound conditions showed that these background condition had no effect on memory recall. Despite this result, other studies were performed that helped to support the effect of background condition on memory recall. Jones, West, and Estell (2006) performed an experimental design that used Mozart and silence conditions in their study, which showed that background condition does affect memory recall. Herweg and Bunzeck (2015) and Ferreri, Bigand, and Bugaiska (2015) performed similar experimental designs that both supported the idea that background condition affects memory recall. Nguyen and Gahn (2017) also performed an experimental study using silence and four music conditions, which had results that were shown to support the idea that background condition affects memory recall.
With new research and experimental studies being performed, new and more precise information can be discovered about background conditions and memory recall that can potentially help students retain a greater volume of information and the ability to recall it easier as well.
Review
Norris, Baddeley, and Page (2004) performed an experimental study with 16 students from the University of Bristol, Bristol, United Kingdom, who were compensated €4.00 for their participation. Each participant was presented a list with four letters, three single digit numbers, and then an equals sign for 120 trials (Norris et, alt., 2004). There were four irrelevant sound conditions, no speech, 3s of speech that started before the presentation of the first letter, 3s of speech which started before the first letter and finished before the recall cue, and 6s of speech that started before the first letter and ended before the recall cue, in which each participant received for 30 trials (Norris et, alt., 2004).The results showed that there was no significant effects of irrelevant sound on recall (Norris et, alt., 2004).
Although the previous study shows no significant effect on memory recall, Jones, West, and Estell (2006) went onto performed an experimental study that shows background condition does affect memory recall. The participants were 41 college students, 21 female and 20 male who were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups (Jones et, alt., 2006). The experimental group listened to Mozart while the control group remained in silence (Jones et, alt., 2006). Both the experimental and control groups were asked to answer the same questions on spatial relation tasks and arousal levels (Jones et, alt., 2006). The experimental group findings showed that listening to Mozart enhances spatial performance and had higher levels of arousal or alertness (Jones et, alt., 2006).
Herweg and Bunzeck (2015) performed an experimental study with 167 volunteers between the ages of 18-35. The participants were placed into two groups, one to receive white noise, and the other to receive no noise. The study was broken down into two phase, the encoding phase where they were to learn a set of 180 outdoor and indoor images. During this phase, either white noise or no noise was played. During the recognition phase, the same 180 images were shown along with 90 new images (Herweg & Bunzeck, 2015). Participants had to indicate whether the image was old or not. From this study, Herweg and Bunzeck (2015) found that there was a main effect of sound on reaction time. This shows that the participants that had white noise playing during their encoding phase, answered more quickly than those who received the no noise condition (Herweg & Bunzeck, 2015).
Ferreri, Bigand, and Bugaiska (2015) conducted an experiment similar to that of Herweg and Bunzeck (2015) in which native French participants were to view stimuli under three different conditions, instrumental music, environmentals sounds, and silence. They had three groups of young adults encode a list of words under those three different conditions. Ferreri et al. (2015) hypothesised that there would a greater improvement in memory performance within the music condition than in the environmental sounds and silent conditions (Ferreri et al., 2015). Participants had to retrieve 45 of the old words and then 45 of the new words. They had to indicate if they had previously saw the word during the encoding phase, if their answer was yes then they had to indicate which background condition they were listening to when they saw the word (Ferreri et al., 2015). Their findings showed that they could support their hypothesis and that background music helped provide episodic context while in the process of verbal encoding much greater than that of environmental sounds, and silence (Ferreri et al., 2015).
Nguyen and Grahn (2017) performed an experimental study with 30 students from the University of Ontario as participants. A silent condition and four music conditions, high arousal positive music, high arousal negative music, low arousal positive music, and low arousal negative music, were used to form 90 second instrumental clips with three excerpts from the four music conditions (Nguyen & Grahn, 2017). 14 lists were made from 240 english nouns that ranged between five and nine letters in length. Students were shown lists of 20 words while listening to one of the music conditions or in silence (Nguyen & Grahn, 2017). They were then asked to recall the words they were shown. The results showed the low arousal music allowed participants to recall more words correctly than when they were listening to high arousal music, with the silence condition showing no significant difference in any of the music conditions (Nguyen & Grahn, 2017).
Since the research shows varying results on the effect of background conditions on memory recall, more research is needed to support or refute these findings. Based on these findings there is a need to research into whether classical background music will improve college students short term recall abilities. The hypothesis is that the college students who listen to classical background music will be able to recall a greater number of words than the college students who are exposed to the white noise and silence conditions.
Method
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to examine how college student’s short term memory recall is affected by the presence of different background noise. Whether or not different background conditions improve or worsen college students recall abilities. From this students and professors will be able to adjust their study habits and teaching techniques.
A quantitative experimental design will be used. It is an exploratory within subjects – repeated measures design. An experimental design is the best design to use for this study because all of the studies that were reviewed used this research design and were able to answer the research question that was posed. This type of study was chosen to control for factors that cause variability between subjects and because fewer subjects are needed to detect a desired effect size. An experimental design will allow for the hypothesis to be tested in ways that are similar to the studies that were reviewed.
Population and Sample
The population for this study is college students with the target population being college students from Middlesex Community College. The sample will contain 150 students from MCC. The sample will be chosen by random sampling. Students aged 18-24 will be represented in this sample. A characteristic that will be controlled for will be English as a second language. Students with English as their first language would be ideal since word lists containing uncommon English nouns will be used. College students from ages 18 -24 that attend MCC with English as their first language will be randomly selected from a list of students that would be acquired from the registrar's office. This group of participants will then be randomly selected and placed into three equally sized groups (n=50).
Investigative Techniques
The three groups of participants will be exposed to three levels of the independent variable of background conditions with each group receiving the stimuli in a different order. Group one receiving the stimuli in this order, classical music, white noise, silence. Group two receiving the stimuli in this order, white noise, silence, classical music. Group three receiving the stimuli in this order, silence, classical music, white noise. The classical condition will consist of Mozart's Sonata for Two Pianos, the white noise condition will consist of Gaussian white noise, and the silence condition will consist of the absence of sound provided by noise cancelling headphones. The dependent variable of memory recall will be measured by the number of nouns the participants are able to recall correctly after each of the background conditions.
Instrumentation
The dependent variable of memory recall will be measured by asking participants to recall a list of uncommon nouns that will be shown to them via powerpoint while being exposed to different background conditions. A master list will be made of 30 uncommon English nouns. These nouns will be the same length and will all consist of two syllables. These uncommon nouns will be randomly divided into three lists with ten nouns per list. Three different powerpoints will be made using these three lists, each one containing the lists in different orders. One powerpoint will have the lists in this order, 1, 2, 3. Another with the lists in this order 2, 3, 1 and the last one with the lists in this order, 3, 1, 2 as to avoid confounds. Each powerpoint will consist of three ten minute sessions. Two minutes to view the list, four minutes for word recall, and four minutes to rest before the next session with a different background condition begins. An encoded packet with the participants order of background condition and list order will be given to each participant. Three sheets with ten fill in the blanks areas will used to measure memory recall. In these blank spaces participants will write the nouns that they were able to recall.
Data Collection
The purpose and procedure will be explained to all participants from a research assistant. They will be told that they will be given noise cancelling headphones and shown a powerpoint presentation with three lists of words with a different sound for each list. They will be told that they will have two minutes to memorize a list, four minutes to write down as many words that they can remember, and four more minutes to rest before the next session with a new list and accompanying sound begins. The assistant will ask if they have any questions or concerns and will answer them accordingly while handing out consent forms. The participants will review the consent forms and sign them. They will schedule an appointment with the research assistant to come back at a later date to complete the study.
One the date of their scheduled appointment they will be guided into one of the computer labs at MCC where they will be handed an answer sheet packet, a pencil, and a pair of wireless noise cancelling headphones. They will be asked to sit in from of a projection screen where the assistant will show the powerpoint with the list that was randomly assigned to them while playing the correct order of background conditions depending on the group they were assigned to. The assistant will monitor the participants to make sure that all writing ceases once the four minutes of recall are up. The participants will continue this process of memorizing, recalling and resting until all three sessions are completed. At the end of the three sessions, the answer sheet packet will be collected and the research assistant will count how many nouns the participant was able to recall for each of the sessions. The will be given a score between zero and ten to represent the participants short term recall ability.
Ethical Considerations
Since the study will take place at one of MCC’s computer labs, site permission will be needed in addition to consent forms. The consent form will assure the participant that participating in the study is voluntary and that aren’t being forced to participate. It will also include the purpose of this research, a description of the procedure, and the risks that they may encounter from participating. It will also assure the participant that this research will remain confidential and describe the benefits that could come from this study if they choose to participate.
Bias
A sampling bias could occur since participants are required to have English as their first language. Since students are being randomly selected to participate in the study, a research assistant will be used to keep any personal bias the researcher may have towards participants from interfering, since a student they may know could be chosen to participate in the study.
Assumptions
It needs to be assumed that participants will be honest and actively engaged within the three sessions of the study.
Limitations
The length of the study and the fact that it only focuses on the effects of background conditions on short term memory recall and not on the long term effects of background conditions could be considered a limitation to the study. The study will also only look at students that have English as their first language. Different results may be obtained for students who have another language other than English as their first language. The length of time between different conditions may also affect the outcome of the study. A study that spans over a greater length of time and varies the time between background conditions would be useful to conduct in the future to see if there is an effect on long term memory recall. Different genres of music could be used as well to see if there is an improvement on long term memory recall while listening to other types of music.
Data Analysis and Expected Results
Data will be analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. Using the scores that will be obtained from answer sheet packets, means and standard deviations will be calculated and used to summarize the data between the groups of participants in the three background conditions. A t-test for repeated measures will be calculated to compare the mean difference between the number of words recalled correctly for the three levels of background conditions, classical music, white noise, and silence, regardless of stimuli order. An ANOVA will be added as a between subjects factor to decipher if stimuli order had affected the number of nouns recalled correctly from the participants. An alpha level of .05 will be set in order to determine the statistical significance between groups. An alpha level of p< .05 will be expected from all participants while recalling words in the instrumental background condition, so the null hypothesis will be rejected and the study’s hypothesis will be supported and accepted. Type I error will be avoided by setting the confidence interval at .05. Type II error will be avoided by ensuring that the sample size is large enough. There will be 50 participants per group so detecting a difference when one exists will be able to occur.
Conclusion
If the data is found to support the hypothesis, then college students would be better off listening to instrumental background music while studying or memorizing information that would need to be recalled, then listening to white noise, or silence while performing that same task. It would support the notion that background condition, specifically instrumental music, effects and improves short term memory recall abilities in college students. If the hypothesis is not supported, it would imply that classical music has a similar effect on short term memory recall ability as white noise would, but it would also indicate that classical music and white noise would have a more positive effect on short term memory recall ability in college students than silence would.