8th Annual WML Academic Symposium

Presenter(s): Shana Byerley and Hayley Cook-Thibeau
Title: Effects of Music on Memory
Developed under the guidance of Dr. Jutta Street , Psychology

We investigated the influence of instrumental music versus lyrical music from performance on a simple memory task. In the present study, participants were randomly assigned groups (control, instrumental, lyrical) before entering the experiment. They were exposed to a word list composed of ten common words then asked to recall as many as possible after one minute. No statistically significant correlations were found between any of the experimental groups and the memorization task scores. These findings suggest that although no significant evidence was gathered in this study, further research needs to be conducted to determine whether a positive or negative relationship exists.