Relationship Between Number of Words Recalled and Use of Background Music While Encoding

WILLIAM ANDERSON WALTER HINES P AGE HIGH SCHOOL 003370-002 PSYCHOLOGY HL SESSION MAY 2013 1,724 WORDS

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Table of Contents
Abstract ......................................................................................................................................................... 3 Introduction .................................................................................................................................................. 4 Method ......................................................................................................................................................... 5 Design........................................................................................................................................................ 5 Participants ............................................................................................................................................... 5 Materials ................................................................................................................................................... 6 Procedures ................................................................................................................................................ 6 Results ........................................................................................................................................................... 7 Discussion...................................................................................................................................................... 8 Works Cited ................................................................................................................................................... 9 Appendices.................................................................................................................................................. 10 A. Consent Form...................................................................................................................................... 10 B. Word List ............................................................................................................................................. 11 C. Reading to participants that listen to music ....................................................................................... 11 D. Reading to participants that do not listen to music ........................................................................... 11 E. Materials ............................................................................................................................................. 12 F. Table of Raw Data ............................................................................................................................... 12 G. Chi-Squared Test for Independence Calculator Calculations Screenshot .......................................... 12 H. Treatment Group Calculations Screenshot ........................................................................................ 12 I. Control Group Calculations Screenshot ............................................................................................... 13 J. List of Words in Order of Number of Times Remembered.................................................................. 13 K. Debrief Letter ...................................................................................................................................... 13

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Abstract
The present study was designed to examine the role of background noise on memorization of a list. Forty-two high school students served as participants. Each participant was either randomly assigned to memorize words from a list while listening to piano music or no music at all. The students were informed before the experiment that he or she would be required to write down as many words as could be remembered after one minute of viewing a list of words. In general, the participants that listened to piano music did not memorize a significantly different number of words compared to participants that did not listen to music.

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Introduction
Many students at Walter Hines Page High School claim that studying with music playing in the background helps them remember the information they are studying. However, many other students disagree and believe that they remember just as much while studying without music at all.1 This study aimed to determine whether a simple memorization taskremembering a list of fifteen wordswould be more efficiently done while listening to music or without music. Many prior studies2 disagree when addressing this topic. One study3 states that calming music led to better performancewhen compared with a no-music condition, while another study4 determined that results indicate that studying in silent environments is most conductive to verbal working memory. In 1952, Hall5 found that performance on reading comprehension tests was significantly improved when background music was playing. All these studies had not provided conclusive evidence, thus the motivation for the particular topic of the study. The null hypothesis was The number of words remembered by an individual is independent of the type of background noise6 . The experimental hypothesis was The number of words remembered by an individual is dependent on the type of background noise.This study attempts to determine whether there is a significant amount of difference in the number of words remembered when listening to a classical song7 compared to when not listening to a song.

Out of 28 students in an IB English HL class, 13 students believed they memorized more information when they study with music and 15 believed they memorized more when they do not listen to music. 2 Eiras & McNeil; The Effects of Background Music and Noise on Verbal Working Memory; 2010. Also, Hallam et al; The Effects of Background Music on Primary School Pupils Task Performance ; 2002. 3 Hallam et al. 4 Eiras & McNeil. 5 Hall; The Effect of Background Music on the Reading Comprehension of 278 Eighth and Ninth Grade Students; 1952. 6 i.e. Music or no music 7 The first 1 minute of Colors/Dance by George Winston was used.

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Method
Design
The study undertaken was a laboratory experiment because it was the simplest way to control all extraneous variables8. Before each participant partook in the experiment, he or she was required to read the informed consent document9 and subsequently sign so as to agree to participate in the study. Therefore, the participants acknowledged that they understood the aim of the experiment and that their names would not be disclose10d in the studys report. The independent variable was the condition of music or no music while the dependent variable was the number of words memorized from the provided list11. Along with the independent and dependent variables, there were a number of controls to keep the experiment as similar as possible for each participant.12 The amount of background noise13, type of headphones used14, and amount of time allowed15 for word memorizations were all controlled.

Participants
The sample population of forty-two individuals included high school students in their Junior or Senior year. These students were aged 16-18 and were a collection of males and females. This provided a population similar to the target population of all high school students. Juniors and Seniors were used because it was simpler to get consent from these students than Sophomores and Juniors.16A universal class roster was provided by Walter Hines Page High School. Each English class was given a number and a Graphic Display Calculator17 randomization program was used for randomly selecting three classes. For each of the three classes selected, all students were assigned numbers and the GDC was once again used; this time, fourteen students were randomly selected; seven were females and seven were males. These fourteen students were assigned numbers 1-14 and the GDC randomly allocated seven students to the control group18 and the other seven students to the treatment group19. Each participant was either in the control group or treatment group; therefore, this was an independent measures experiment.

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i.e. Background noise, people walking by, etc. Appendix A 10 Confidentiality 11 Appendix B 12 Other than natural memory ability 13 No background noise interfered with the experiment because students were placed in an area separate from other students. 14 All students used the same pair of headphones: MEEL Electronics Ear-buds. 15 One minute was allotted for each participant to look at the word list. 16 Almost all Juniors & Seniors are 16 or older while almost no Freshmen or Sophomores are 16 years old so parent consent was not needed, therefore making the experiment less complicated to undertake. 17 Otherwise known as GDC. 18 The control group consisted of students that did not listen to any music. 19 The treatment group listened to Colors/Dance while viewing the words.

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Materials
Few materials were used in this experiment: pencil, MEEL Electronics Ear-buds, an iPhone, lined paper, and a timer were all used. Although there were not many materials20 used, all were quite important in the overall plan of the study. The iPhone provided the music while the ear-buds transferred the music from the phone to the subjects ears. The Pencil and paper were used for each subject to record each word that was recalled, and the timer was used to make sure each subject had the same amount of time for the experiment.

Procedures
First, provide participant with consent form21 and ask him or her to read the consent details and sign his or her consent. After subject signs the consent form, allow participant to place ear-buds into his or her ears and then supply participant with blank lined paper and a pencil. Read out the specific directions. If the participant is in the control group, read out directions to participants that will not listen to music22. However, if the participant is in the treatment group, read out directions to participants that will not listen to music23. Following the directions, give the list of words24 to the participant and undertake specific actions for the situation simultaneously. If participant is in the control group, do not start the music and use a timer to determine when one minute is complete. On the other hand, if the participant is in the treatment group, start the music and use a timer to determine when one minute is complete. Once the one minute is up, recover the word list from the participant. If the participant is in the treatment group, replay the music that was previously played when he or she was memorizing the list of words. 25 Conversely, if the participant is in the control group, disregard Procedure 6-a. Allow the participant one additional minute to write down all words he or she recalls. Then, retrieve the paper from the participant and inform him or her that he or she will be debriefed through email once the results are compiled. In order to complete the experiment, make sure to debrief all participants. Before undertaking the experiment and while the experiment is going on, make sure that all ethical considerations are taken into place. Guarantee that each participant is sixteen years or older and if he or she is not, make sure a guardian signs the consent form. During the experiment, do not attempt to deceive the subjects in any way. Make sure to explicitly detail the purpose of the experiment and the procedures that will be completed before the subject becomes engaged. Finally, ensure that all participants are debriefed after the experiment has been finished and the results have been gathered.

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Appendix E Appendix A 22 Appendix D 23 Appendix C 24 Appendix B 25 This step is taken because of Tulving & Thompsons findings that memory is most effective when information available at encoding is also present at retrieval. The section of the song that is played during the encoding of the words is also believed to help stimulate the retrieval when the song is replayed while the participant is writing down words he or she remembers. Tulving & Thompson; Encoding Specificity and Retrieval Processes in Episodic Memory; 1973.

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Results
After collecting the raw data26, a chi-squared test was carried out. The chi-squared test for independence was appropriate for this data because the original aim was to determine whether the number of words memorized from a list is independent of type of background noise. A TI-84 Plus Silver Edition calculator was used to complete the chi-squared test27. At the null hypothesis was accepted with a p-value of .98. Therefore, the data was not statistically significant at ; as a result of this experiment, it is concluded that the number of words remembered by an individual is independent of the type of background noise.

# of Words Memorized
6 5 Occurrences 4 3 2 1 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 # of Words Treatment Group Control Group

For each group, the number of occurrences of each number of words was quite similar when comparing the groups in the above graph. The mean number of words memorized by members of the treatment group was 11.19 words, while the control group averaged 11.52 words. The standard deviation for the treatment group was 2.20 while the standard deviation for the control group was 2.22.28 Through this data it is understood that these two samples had almost identical measures of central tendency and dispersion. Mean was chosen as a descriptive statistic because the range of the data was too small to use the median.

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Appendix F Screenshot of the result on Appendix G 28 Treatment group calculation displayed on Appendix H while Control Group calculation displayed on Appendix I.

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Discussion
After reviewing the results of the chi-squared test, the null hypothesis was accepted at and it was determined that the number of words remembered by an individual is independent of the type of background noise. The calculated p-value exceeds 0.05, so the observation is consistent with the null hypothesis, as it falls within the range of what would happen 95% of the time if the conditions were similar to the testing conditions. The findings from this experiment conflict with the conclusion of the Hall study.29 Instead of finding that music influenced memorization as in the Hall study, this experiment found that number of words memorized was independent of music playing. Since the Hall study occurred in 1952, changes may have happened in American culture. It is possible that due to the emergence of portable music players such as iPods and the walkman, students are less often soothed by music since they are so used to hearing it and must therefore tune the music out. However, this study does back up the results of Thomson & Tulving. Both experiments found that the first and last words in the sequence were remembered most often.30 This experiment could be changed in further replications by guaranteeing that subjects are not impacted by outside noises. The participant could be put into a soundproof room and then engage in the experiment. In addition, in order to guarantee that understandable words are used, a test prior to the experiment can be done to determine which words are understood by most people. This way, words would not be foreign to participants in the study. The research is limited when applying the results to a population. Since the study was done on high school students, the results should only be applied to students of a similar age in Western-style high schools; therefore, this experiment lacks ecological validity. Additionally, cross-cultural validity may be questionable because students in Western countries memorize lists with different styles. In order to fix the ecological validity, a more diverse sample could be gathered that includes adults and individuals from many different races. While these validities may be suspect, the research did have reliability. The study could be easily replicated by another individual. It can be concluded that while one may assume music helps him or her to study, this statement has not been proven true as a result of this research.

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Hall; The Effect of Background Music on the Reading Comprehension of 278 Eighth and Ninth Grade Students ; 1952. In this study, it was determined that performance on reading comprehension tests was significantly improved when background music was playing. 30 Appendix J provides list of words in order of number of times they were remembered.

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Works Cited
Hall, Jody C. "The Effect of Background Music on the Reading Comprehension of 278 Eighth and Ninth Grade Students." Journal of Educational Research, 1952: 451-458. Hallam, Susan, John Price, and Georgia Katsarou. "The Effects of Background Music on Primary School Pupils' Task Performance." Educational Studies, 2002: 111-122. McNeil, Kaycee, and Amanda Eiras. The Effects of Background Music and Noise on Verbal Working Memory. San Jose, California: San Jose State University, 2010. Tulving, Endel, and Donald M. Thomson. "Encoding Specificity and Retrieval Processes in Episodic Memory." Psychological Review 80, no. 5 (1973): 352-373.

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Appendices
A. Consent Form
I have been informed about the intentions of the research I understand that I am allowed to withdraw from the research at any time I understand that throughout the whole research process and after the findings are compiled I all information and results about me will remain confidential I understand that I will be debriefed by email after the results are compiled and will be allowed to view the final results of the research if I request If I do not have an email, I will inform the researchers and request an in-person debrief. I will not be harmed in any way through the research If I am under the age of 16, my parent will give consent for me by signing the parent line If my parent is giving consent for me, I will write N/A in the line stating Participant Signature

I give my informed consent to participate in this research.

Print Name:

Age:

Email Address:

Participant Signature:

If needed, Parent Signature:

Requesting In-Person Debriefing (Circle One):

Yes

No

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B. Word List
Boy Nine Color Baby Kiwi Mango Table Worm Door Car Green Sex Book Army Girl

C. Reading to participants that listen to music

You will be participating in an experiment that investigates the effect of background music on shortterm memory. I have given you headphones and a sheet of paper faced down. As soon as I say go, piano music will play and you will be allowed to turn over the paper. You will need to attempt to memorize as many words as possible in one minute. When the time is up, I will allow the music to keep the music playing and ask you to write down as many words as you can remember from the list on a piece of paper. Once you have written down all the words that you remember, you will be done with the experiment. Thank you for your participation.

D. Reading to participants that do not listen to music

You will be participating in an experiment that investigates the effect of background music on shortterm memory. I have given you headphones and a sheet of paper faced down. As soon as I say go, please turn over the paper. No music will play, but do not worry because this is an intentional result. You will need to attempt to memorize as many words as possible in one minute. When the time is up, keep the headphones in your ears, and write down as many words as you can remember from the list on a piece of paper. Once you have written down all the words that you remember, you will be done with the experiment. Thank you for your participation.

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E. Materials
Pencil MEEL Electronics Ear-buds White iPhone 4s Blank lined paper Timer (Stopwatch)

F. Table of Raw Data

# of Words Memorized 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Total Memorized Groups Treatment Control 3 3 3 2 3 4 1 2 21 2 3 2 4 3 2 2 3 21

G. Chi-Squared Test for Independence Calculator Calculations Screenshot

H. Treatment Group Calculations Screenshot

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I. Control Group Calculations Screenshot

J. List of Words in Order of Number of Times Remembered

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. Girl Boy Sex Green Kiwi Worm Mango Car Door Table Army Color Book Baby Nine

K. Debrief Letter
Dear Walter Hines Page High School student, Thank you for your participation in my recent experiment. The following is a report on the findings as a result of the experiment you were involved in. Based on the findings of many prominent psychologists such as Hall (1952), I expected students that listened to background noise while memorizing the list of words would be able to memorize a significantly larger number of words. I believed that the calm nature of the piano would stimulate the brain and increase memorization ability. However, according to my results from a chi-squared test for independence at a significance level of 0.05, I was wrong. The test revealed that the number of words memorized was not influenced by either background noise (piano) or no background noise. Thanks again for your participation. If you have any further questions, please contact me at @gmail.com or in Room 906. Once again, thank you, William Anderson 13