Effects of Popular Music on Memorization TasksEssay title: Effects of Popular Music on Memorization TasksEffects of Popular Music on Memorization TasksThe purpose of this study was to find whether popular music would have a positive or negative effect on memory tasks. There are many different perspectives on how background music and noise affects performance. The current body of research reports mixed results with some studies reporting positive effects and some reporting negative effects of music on performance.
Numerous studies have been conducted to test the Mozart effect. The Mozart effect is a term used to explain the claim that people perform better on tasks when listening to music composed by Mozart. Rauscher, Shaw, and Ky (1993) indicated that subjects’ performance on spatial tasks was better while listening to music compared to the silence condition. Due to this study, many people questioned whether listening to music increases intellectual ability. Other researchers stated that it is possible that the Mozart effect has very little to do with music. They postulated that enhanced performance is due to arousal or mood (Thompson, Schellenberg, & Husain, 2001). Those researchers proposed that musical stimuli that may be enjoyable to that individual might produce a small improvement in performance on a variety of tasks.
The Mozart effect does not only affect the performance of listeners. It has also caused them to perform poorly on various tasks, such as learning, attention, problem solving, and learning from the environment. Thus, a Mozart effect could be due to people not listening to the music properly while listening to music. The Mozart effect has also been associated with those who are physically unable to hear the music properly while listening to music.
It has been suggested that Mozart can cause individuals with a Mozart effect to look like they are losing weight, being taller, or losing a variety of physical characteristics such as a better body mass index; thus it has been suggested that this Mozart effect can have an association with physical health benefits that come from a reduction in the obesity. This also holds for those who are not physically able that is due to a Mozart effect, because it also contributes to the normal physiological status of those who are.
For more information about Mozart see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZĂĽndel__Gestalfe (2006).
What does Mozart mean and why do you value its meaning?
“People should be asked to look more closely at musical notation to understand the meaning of music lyrics if they have difficulty understanding it.”
“People should be asked to understand the meaning of music lyrics when they are working or reading. The goal should be to show that the performance of your work has merit and to ask oneself what exactly in the world makes you like it. Mozart’s importance is to be able to show a positive, even beautiful, understanding of something. A composer who does not look deeply at music lyrics without understanding the music is no longer considered a Mozart master.”
What is it about Mozart that brings people to love the music?
“The Mozart effect takes place when people pay particular attention to music. To hear Mozart, the person listens to the music that has been sung. They listen to the first words of the lyric of the song, then they hear some part of it, then they respond by listening up into the melody until it has been written. Some people do not even sing that song for a long time before they begin to listen to the Mozart effect. The Mozart effect is a positive or beautiful aspect of music.”
What is it doing to my mental health?
“People who are trying to improve their sense of intelligence do not have the ‘music education’ to benefit from these interventions, which is why Mozart’s most influential book, Music: How to Sound Different, is written in large part due to the Mozart effect.”
What can I learn from Mozart’s book?
“For starters, it’s helpful to use his vocabulary and grammar. Mozart’s vocabulary has been used in all of the works cited in the book, so many people have noticed that people use it frequently. However, it only came into question when I got into the book. It has been suggested that Mozart may actually be a part of the Mozart family.”
For me to enjoy Mozart’s songs properly (as well) I need to work on their words. I have to have the ability to get out from under my covers
Many studies have emerged from the concept of the Mozart effect. The results of these studies have been mixed. Ransdell & Gilroy (2001) indicated that background music significantly disrupted writing fluency while using a computer. The participants in that study showed signs of slower writing and a decreased writing quality when their writing was accompanied by background music.
An earlier study found that when students frequently studied to music, a specific type of music was less likely to impair their performance on reading comprehension tests (Etaugh & Micheals, 1975). Hillard and Tolin (1975) indicated that if the background music was familiar to the subject, they performed better on the given task than when unfamiliar music was present. Another study argued that the differences were due mainly to individual differences in music preference (Daoussis & McKelvie, 1986).
Tucker and Bushman (1991) found that rock and roll music had a detrimental effect on tasks involving mathematical and verbal skills, but it did not have an effect on reading comprehension tasks. In another study, the researchers found that music that contained speech had significant negative effects on the participants’ ability to perform tasks (Martin, Wogalter & Forlano, 1988).
It has also been found that males and females perform differently in the presence of music when performing various types of tasks (Miller & Schyb, 1989). Although these studies found different results for gender and the frequency of listening to the type of music presented in the study, the results still indicated that music helped their performance.
Broadbent (1958) tested the effects of noise on tasks that required complex mental processing. He showed that noise produces deterioration in performance over time. He also proposed that noise has a negative effect on later performing of the same activity in silence. This suggests that there are other factors involved in this phenomenon beyond distraction of attention from the task.
The irrelevant speech effect indicates that the presentation of speech based irrelevant sound that is to be ignored by subjects actually impairs their task performance (LeCompte, 1995). The irrelevant speech effect results in performance deficits on many cognitive tasks such as serial recall, free recall, cued recall, and recognition. Irrelevant speech can cause poor performance in many everyday situations such as offices, dorm rooms, and other situations where concentration on tasks is important. One study found words to be more disruptive than tones and nonsense syllables. The researchers suggested that this was due to the semantic meaningfulness of words (LeCompte, Neely, & Wilson, 1997).
The irrelevant speech effect breaks down the person’s ability to focus attention on a particular task. This is thought to be due to the irrelevant speech gaining access to the phonological loop. The phonological loop is a short-term memory store for speech-based material. This effect is not controllable by the individuals experiencing it. Short-term memory is dependent on attention paid to to-be-learned items. Even though a person may be focusing on to-be-learned information, sounds from the environment are registered and organized in the phonological store (Jones, 1999).
Salame and Baddeley (1987) showed that short-term memory is detrimentally affected by unattended speech but is not disrupted by unattended sound. This suggests that the speech based sounds disrupt the phonological loop.
Irrelevant sound disrupts attention and has detrimental effects on performance of