{"id":273,"date":"2019-08-15T02:44:07","date_gmt":"2019-08-15T02:44:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lvh.msu.domains\/?p=273"},"modified":"2019-08-15T02:44:07","modified_gmt":"2019-08-15T02:44:07","slug":"273","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/drvan\/2019\/08\/15\/273\/","title":{"rendered":"Music and Memory"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Hello, I am an 8th grader who is researching the effects of music on memory. I greatly admire the work that you do in your field! Since you are so experienced, I would like to ask you a couple of questions:

1. Do you think that playing a musical instrument regularly affects memory? Why?
2. Do you think that listening to music while memorizing will affect memory? How?

Your input would be very valuable to my research. Thank you for taking the time out of your day to answer my questions.<\/p>-Sahil<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Hi Sahil;
Question 1: There is some research that indicates that musical experience can affect memory, but it\u2019s a specific type of memory \u2014 it\u2019s what\u2019s called your \u2018verbal\u2019 memory, or the ability to remember verbal information (things like lists of words, etc.). It\u2019s not entirely clear why that\u2019s the case, although what we know about musical development is that musician\u2019s brains tend to have more development on the left-hand side of the brain, and that\u2019s the side of the brain that\u2019s primarily responsible for the processing of verbal information. Also, musicians obviously tend to spend a lot of time listening to sound, so when information is presented via sound the musicians may have more practice in active listening or recall of that information.\u00a0

Question 2: There\u2019s been some work done on this, too, but what\u2019s really interesting about this is that nobody really seems to agree on this. One thing that\u2019s been found is that if you\u2019re listening to music, it can actually disrupt memorization of verbal information \u2014 it makes memorization\u00a0worse!<\/em>\u00a0This is especially true if the music you\u2019re listening to has words. The idea is that the music and words you\u2019re listening to actually interfere with the verbal information you\u2019re trying to learn. It\u2019s interesting that this has been found even with music without words, because a lot of people say they like to listen to \u201cclassical music\u201d while they\u2019re studying, and there were even \u201cmusic to study by\u201d compilations that were put out by companies back when there were studies that were claiming that just listening to music could make you smarter! But a lot of the evidence more recently indicates that music in general can interfere with verbal memory because it\u2019s being processed by the same part of the brain that processes verbal information.\u00a0

As I said, there isn\u2019t agreement on this, though! There have been studies claiming that if you listen to music while you\u2019re studying, you should listen to the same music when you\u2019re taking a test, because that will put you in the same frame of mind when you were studying and you\u2019ll do better on tests. (But not everyone agrees with that!) There are studies that have found that background music, as long as it\u2019s low in complexity, can help learn second languages. A more recent study found that it\u2019s the speed of the music (the tempo) and the volume that have the most effect on things like reading and memory tasks.\u00a0

This is a research area that\u2019s very active these days, because everyone wants to find what will help them study\/learn more effectively and efficiently, so you\u2019re definitely asking a good question \u2014 but there isn\u2019t a lot of consensus right now on what the answer to that question is! \u00a0

I hope that helps a little bit! Good luck with your research!

-Dr. Van<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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