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1st Student's Major

Psychology

1st Student's College

Social and Behavioral Sciences

Students' Professional Biography

Kristin Sandberg and Sarah Harmon are students in the Department of Psychology at Minnesota State University, Mankato.

Mentor's Name

Rosemary Krawczyk

Mentor's Email Address

rosemary.krawczyk@mnsu.edu

Mentor's Department

Psychology

Mentor's College

Social and Behavioral Sciences

Abstract

This study investigated the effects that popular music has on memory performance. It was proposed that popular music would adversely affect both studying and memory recall. Forty introductory psychology students participated in the study. Subjects were given a list of fifty words to study in 6 ½ minutes, with music either being present or absent. This was termed the learning stage. In this study, four conditions were tested. In all 4 conditions, subjects were assigned to either a “music” pre-period or a “non-music” pre-period and a “music” post-period or a “non-music” post-period. After they had studied the words, subjects were given another 6 ½ minutes to recall the words either with or with out music present. This period was called the recall stage. The researchers hypothesized that music would have a detrimental effect on performance, these expected results were not found. Findings from this study suggested that students who study while listening to popular music performed at the same level as those without music present in either condition. Results indicated that women excelled in recall when the testing condition did not have music present in comparison to men.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

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