Draft 2: How Do Different Types of Music Affect Memory Recall?

This topic submitted by Holly Andrews, Kendall Christerson, Michelle Crowe, Rachel Sparks ( sparksra@muohio.edu ) on 11/4/09. [Section: ]

Explorations in Inquiry---Western Program---Miami University

INTRODUCTION
How does the presence of rap, classical non-vocal, pop, and hard rock music affect a personÕs working memory as opposed to silence? In this experiment, we will endeavor to discover the answer to this question. Specifically, we will explore memory recall of a series of numbers while listening to these different types of music. We believe that recall will be best under silent working conditions, followed by classical non-vocal music. We also hypothesize that a personÕs major may affect how well they memorize and reiterate data, particularly with music majors (they may be better at focusing with music playing). We plan to gather data regarding the working memory under the conditions previously stated to arrive at a conclusion that adequately answers our research question. As a group composed of musicians and psychology majors who have different methods of studying with and without music, we became attracted to this topic based upon our differences and our common interests in music and the human mind.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION
The memory in the brain is a wonderful thing. It has multiple levels that can be influenced by loops of the same thought over and over. The brain creates memories by sensing and recording. These are Òshort-termÓ memories. Once the short-term memory gets played on a continuous loop for a certain amount of time, it is incorporated into the brainÕs Òlong-termÓ memory. This memory can be recalled at any time; the short-term memory is a bit more tricky to recall. Different tempos and styles of music may affect the ability of the brain to recall a series of numbers. This is what we plan to find out in our study. It has been shown in previous studies that music can aid in recall of students; there have also been a couple of studies showing music has no effect on the ability to recall information. Different tempos of music tend to affect the brain in different ways regarding memory; a tempo at about 60 beats per minute has been shown to be the optimum tempo for recalling information. We learned how to perfect our study by reading multiple sources, and we now feel we have a study that is ready to be tested.

Our research relates to the larger question of how the brain functions, especially under certain stimuli (our stimulus is music in this case). By doing this study, we are trying to discover which music style allows the brain to function at its highest potential. Our research will allow us to look into the way the human memory works and why it works the way it does. We can then develop a strategy for students to use when studying in order for them to retain as much information as possible.

SOURCES
Alley, Thomas R. and Marcie E. Greene. "The Relative and Perceived Impact of Irrelevant Speech, Vocal Music and Non-vocal Music on Working Memory." Current Psychology 27.4 (2008), 277 - 289.
The article details the effects of irrelevant background speech, vocal music and non-vocal music on working memory, which is composed of a visuospatial sketchpad (holds and manipulates visual and spatial images) and a phonological loop (stores and manipulates sounds for a brief period of time). These effects were determined by conducting a study in which working memory was examined under the conditions of silence, vocal music, equivalent instrumental music, and irrelevant speech. The hypothesis declared in this study stated that instrumental music might be more of a distraction because listeners would be compelled to decipher what the lyrics to the song playing are, whereas when vocal music is played, they do not have to think about what the lyrics are. The authors also hypothesized that one of the following three scenarios would play out when instrumental music was played: listeners who are more familiar with a songÕs lyrics will be less disrupted because they wouldnÕt have to use as much effort to recover the lyrics from memory; listeners who are more familiar with a songÕs lyrics would have more disruption in their phonological loop, which would lead to a disruption in working memory; or familiarity with lyrics would be irrelevant since there are no vocals to instrumental music whatsoever.
Participants in this study were given seven trials of a digit span under conditions of silence, vocal music, equivalent instrumental music, and irrelevant speech. This digit span consisted of random sequences of ten digits at a rate of one digit per 0.8 seconds, and participants were then given up to 20 seconds per sequence to them down immediately after viewing. The songs, both vocal and karaoke, used during the test were ÒWhen IÕm Gone,Ó by Three Doors Down and ÒIÕm With You,Ó by Avril Lavigne, and participants were asked to rank their familiarity with each song after the test was conducted, as well as how distracting they found each condition.
Participants were shown to function best under silence, followed by instrumental music, irrelevant speech, and vocal music. This demonstrated that the hypothesis that performance would be best under the condition of silence was correct, although the hypothesis that instrumental music would be more disruptive than vocal was proven inaccurate. These results indicate that vocal communication disrupts working memory more than simple instrumentals, most likely by accessing and interrupting the phonological loop. However, familiarity with song lyrics did not appear to have an effect on performance in the study.
This article could assist us with our inquiry in several ways Ð this supports our hypothesis that classical, non-vocal music will allow participants to perform better than they would with other type of music, and also that silence is the best environment for oneÕs memory. I was also intrigued by the fact that this study took into account the participantsÕ familiarity with the songs used in the study; we could incorporate this into our study as well, although I doubt that it will affect our results. I wonder if it would be a better idea to use numbers or words in our study Ð IÕm not sure if it will matter too much one way or the other, but IÕm curious as to if one is easier to remember than the other.

Boltz, Marilyn G., Edendorf, Brittany and Field, Benjamin. ÒAudiovisual Interactions: The Impact of Visual Information on Music Perception and MemoryÓ. Music Perception. 2009. Psych Info. October 20, 2009.
The article ÒAudiovisual Interactions: The Impact of Visual Information on Music Perception and MemoryÓ by Marilyn G. Boltz, Brittany Edendorf, and Benjamin Field of Haverford College depicts two studies that look at how participants perceive music under certain conditions. The hypothesis of the first study is to test whether the same tune is perceived to be faster, louder and higher pitched when played along with positive visual stimuli and vice versa for negative visual stimuli. The participants looked at five different audiovisual clips and were asked to fill out a set of 4 judgments about them on a 7-point scale as well as circle adjectives that go along with it. The results of this study ultimately supported the hypothesis. In study 2, the hypothesis is similar but the researchers were interested in looking at recognition memory of a change in either tempo, pitch or both of the tune to reflect positive or negative affect. The experiment was set up the same way as in study 1 but using the altered tunes. Researchers found that the visual affect caused participants to have a distorted melody recognition that corresponded with mood. This didnÕt completely support the hypothesis because melodies were falsely recognized as faster or slower than they actually were when they were paired with positive and negative visual images. Although this article doesnÕt directly connect with the study we want to perform, it brought up some interesting topics that we need to consider when running the study. This article discussed the presence of music majors as well as band and choir members and noted the percentage in the overall sample. I think it would be interesting to note this proportion in our sample as well to see if our results were any different for them compared to our overall results. Also, the article brought up the issue of how positive and negative stimuli can effect perception and memory. In this sense, I thought of the words we will use to test our memory recall while our participants listen to different types of music. Could the presence of positive or negative words impact the perception of the music and hinder their concentration? I think that a mixture of positive and negative words or solely neutral or a combination of all three would work nicely for our experiment.

de Groot, Annette M. B. "Effects of Stimulus Characteristics and Background Music on Foreign Language Vocabulary Learning and Forgetting." Language Learning 56.3 (2006): 463-506. ERIC. EBSCO. Web. 3 Nov. 2009.
This article described a study done on how background music affects the rate at which students can learn a foreign language. This is relevant to our study because we are testing our subjects on words or numbers under different music style variables. This study is very similar to ours and involves the same variables that ours does, and the resulting report is very in depth. This article is a good model of what a sophisticated study should look like on paper; we will refer to this article when performing our study. The article even includes previous studies and their findings in order to help the reader better understand the material; this is exactly the format of our report that we will be writing as our study goes on. The result of the study was that background music tended to have little effect on the amount of words remembered after one week. The music had no negative effect, but it had very little if any positive effect either. This will be useful information in our study because it serves as an argument for our null hypothesis that music has little effect on recall and that the style of music has no effect either. This article shows that not all hypotheses are correct all of the time, and the data actually obtained from an experiment may be different from the results predicted. We predict that music style and presence will affect recall, but this may not be the actual result; thus the reason for doing this study. This study also deals with memorization and recall of groups of words based on their associations with musical pieces. Our study is somewhat similar to this.

Franklin, Michael S. and Katherine Sledge Moore, Chun-Yu Yip, John Jonides, Katie Rattray, and Jeff Moher. "The Effects of Musical Training on Verbal Memory". Society for Education, Music and Psychology Research. October 20, 2009
This article is relevant to our hypothesis because it is a model of how a study of psychological workings should be conducted. It also explains the possible reasons for why the results are viable and why they could also be slightly skewed. The study showed that musicians were somewhat more skilled at retaining information than other non-musicians, but the authors also explained possible alternative reasons for why these results were obtained. It also includes other sources that we may need to check out later that show subsequent studies that have been done on memory that show less of a difference between musicians and non-musicians in terms of memory. It seems that in this type of study, some variables can be big factors in how results may turn out. Sample size is an issue that we will have to carefully plan so that we have a large enough sample without being totally outrageous and getting redundant results. This article also connects musicality, IQ level and the ability to learn new languages, which is another helpful tidbit to know when we conduct our study. This could help explain why memory is supposedly so much better in musicians than non-musicians. However, in this study, the variables like ÒsmartnessÓ were effectively eliminated through choosing students with relatively similar SAT scores and GPA. We thought the graphs included in the lab report were very helpful in understanding the results; we will definitely be incorporating comprehensive visuals in our project. We liked the organization that these authors had; this article was very easy to read and user-friendly. Words were defined effectively and we really got a feel for how this study was achieved. This article pertains to our hypothesis because it shows how a report should be written and how different factors should be taken into account.

Gromko, Joyce Eastlund, et al. "Effects of Temporal Sequencing and Auditory Discrimination on Children's Memory Patterns for Tones, Numbers, and Nonsense Words." Journal of Research in Music Education 57.2 (2009): 140-151. ERIC. EBSCO. Web. 3 Nov. 2009.
This article described a study done on elementary school children on how well they recall nonsense words, numbers and phrases. The children were also tested on their musical recall skills. This study is relevant to ours because it incorporates the ability to memorize and recall words, numbers and pitch. It uses music as a subject to be memorized, which is not exactly what our study aims to test but it relates to our study. We plan to look at the ability of background music to aid in memorization, while this study looks at the ability to memorize music. However, in both cases, music is a means with which memorization and recall can take place. We can use this article to estimate the amount of recall that will take place when music is present; recall seemed to work best with numbers. A U-curve of the ability to recall memorized words is not completely formed with numbers; therefore, numbers would probably be the best tool with which we will test memory. They will have less variability between test subjects. The main result from this study was that recall of tones and nonsense words formed a U-shaped curve in terms of how many items were recalled at different time periods. We will keep this information in mind as we conduct our experiment because variability will be caused no matter what method we use to test memory. Even numbers formed a slight U shape when graphed.

Halpern, Andrea R., and Daniel MŸllensiefen "Effects of timbre and tempo change on memory for music." Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 61.9 (2008): 1371- 1384. Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection. EBSCO. Web. 4 Nov. 2009.
This article describes a study done to discover how different tempos affect the memory in the brain. The results of the experiment showed that tempo and timbre change decreased the ability for the tune to be recognized and for recall to take place. This study relates to ours because it deals with memory change due to changes in musical tempo. While we are using numbers as a tool to measure recall, musical melodies were used in this study for recall. In either case, however, music is used to control the brainÕs memory function. This study also can allow us to form predictions about how different types of music will affect the ability of subjects to recall the slides we will use. This experiment showed that recall decreased as tempo changed from the original melodical tempo; we can predict that changing tempo will also have an effect in our study. This article is also well-written and can serve as yet another model for a good scientific report.

HellbrŸck, JŸrgen and Sabine J. Schlittmeier. "Background Music as Noise Abatement in Open-Plan Offices: A Laboratory Study on Performance Effects and Subjective Preferences.Ó Applied Cognitive Psychology 23 (2009), 684 - 697.
The researchers noted that continuous noise is often played in many open-plan offices to partially mask ambient noises Ð specifically background speech. This is intended to reduce the detrimental impact of background sounds on cognitive performance, as well as reducing subjectively perceived disturbance. Their experiments explored whether background music could achieve the same effects. In addition to collecting subjective data, they tested cognitive performance by using verbal serial recall. They explained that verbal serial recall is the standard task for exploring verbal short-term memory, which they noted is central to human information processing. They tested the effects of staccato music and legato music as they were superimposed on office noise, and they used continuous noise as their control.
In their first experiment, only continuous noise was shown to significantly reduce the detrimental impact of regular office noise. But then in their second experiment, legato music was found to not diminish cognitive performance at all when presented in isolation. Staccato music wasnÕt found to have an effect one way or the other. An interesting side note, looking at the two types of background sound that actually had an effect, is that the researchersÕ subjective ratings in both experiments showed that most of the participants in their studies preferred the legato music to continuous noise in the office, even though the continuous noise showed to be a little better for cognitive performance and memory.

Hogan, David E. and Thomas Huesman. "Music Training and Semantic Clustering in College Students". Northern Kentucky University. October 20, 2009
This article relates to our hypothesis because it involves a similar study done to discover if musicians had better memory recall than non-musical students. This means that the students with musical training were being exposed to lots of musical styles and spent a lot of time around music, whereas the other students were not really exposed to much music if any at all. The researchers tested students with musical training and students with little training. The first test they conducted was based on words, and the second test consisted of numbers (digits). The music-trained children again had a higher retention rate for the words than the non-trained students, but there was not much of a difference between the two groups when the students were tested with digits. This showed that musicians retain words better than students with no musical training, but there is really no correlation between music training and the amount of digits one can recall. This is helpful for our hypothesis because it has given us some ideas about how to go about conducting a test for memory and music. It also has given us some insight into the way that musical training affects intelligence and therefore memory and recall. Supposedly, students who are involved in music have an overall higher intelligence; therefore, they would be better at memorizing and recalling sequences. We can also have a model of how a study like this is supposed to be conducted. We will be using this article as a reference when we form our procedure for how we will conduct our study about different types of music and their relationships to studentsÕ memories. This article also gives us a direction in which to work our study: we should probably conduct our experiment with numbers to eliminate other variables.

Jakobson, Lorna S.; Lewycky, Samantha T.; Kilgour, Andrea R.; Stoesz, Brenda M. ÒMemory for verbal and visual material in highly trained musicians.Ó Music Perception, v. 26 issue 1, 2008, p. 41-55
In this study, the researchers present evidence that formal music instruction is associated with superior verbal and visual memory. Fifteen highly trained pianists and twenty-one individuals with little or no formal music training were tested. The groups were comparable in terms of age, gender distribution, and socioeconomic status. It turned out that the musicians showed better immediate as well as delayed recall of word lists, and also a greater use of a semantic clustering strategy during initial list-learning. The study also tested recall of designs, and group differences in delayed recall of both words and designs persisted even after controlling statistically for estimated Full Scale IQ. Therefore, the results of this study suggest that the extensive music training that musicians receive is associated with superior auditory and visual memory functions.

Kazan, Casey (2008). ÒDoes Music Have a More Powerful Effect on Memory than Images, Words, or Smells?Ó. October 30, 2009. http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2008/08/does-music-have.html
An article entitled ÒDoes Music Have a More Powerful Effect on Memory than Images, Words, or Smells?Ó found on the Daily Galaxy website describes a study done that shows that music does in fact have a greater impact on memory. Researchers studied a sample of college students and their reaction to 30 randomly selected songs that are believed to be popular during the years in which they were growing up. Results showed that the more familiar the music was, the more memories were generated. Also, researchers found that the more pleasing a song is to a person, to greater the memory recall is. This relates to our particular study because, although we are looking at the recall of numbers, rather than memories in general, the likeability of the music may impact our results. This is why we have decided to administer a follow up survey to address the participantsÕ opinion of each song we chose. In addition to this, the researchers have noted that the rostromedial prefrontal cortex, which is a portion of the brain that is thought to handle the processing and tracking of music, is also active during the retrieval of memories. This can either be beneficial to the recall of memories by making the process easier or it can be detrimental due to the extent of cognitive load present with these two processes occurring simultaneously. Either way, this shows that there is a connection between memory and music and can serve as more evidence to support or refute our hypothesis.

KIRKWEG, SARA B.. "THE EFFECTS OF MUSIC ON MEMORY". Missouri Western State University. . 3 November 2009 http://clearinghouse.missouriwestern.edu/manuscripts/230.php
This experiment placed 60 subjects into three different conditions based on the independent variable of music. The three types of music used were: "The Seasons (Spring Movement)" by Hayden, ÒHolier Than ThouÓ by Metallica, and white noise. Each group visually studied a picture for 30 seconds with their specific music or noise playing in the background. After 30 seconds had passed, the picture was taken away and the music or noise was turned off. The groups then filled out a questionnaire about their memories from the picture. The study showed that there was actually not a significant connection found between the type of music or noise played and memory recall. However, it did find that the white noise group made the least amount of memory errors while the Hayden group made the most. The researchers pointed out that their results contrast a lot of other research on the effects of music on memory, mentioning that most research states that music, especially classical, enhances the storage and recall of memory. The researchers also mentioned, however, that there were some limitations to their experiment, including noise pollution outside the testing area and the fact that some of the test subjects might have collaborated when filling out the questionnaire.

Marshall, Nigel A., and David J. Hargreaves "Musical Style Discrimination in the Early Years." Journal of Early Childhood Research 5.1 (2007): 32-46. ERIC. EBSCO. Web. 3 Nov. 2009.
This article involves a study of what age children can distinguish between musical styles. This can be a stepping-stone toward what our study is attempting to uncover. The study performed in this article was very in-depth, which we are attempting to achieve in our study. It is a good model for how a study report should look, including a lot of background information on the topic that the researchers are attempting to explore. The article also explains the implications of the study and what could have been done differently with better technology. Overall, the article explores the ability of young children to discern between different styles of music. We think this will be relevant to our study because children begin to develop ÒtastesÓ in music at a young age. This often leads to methods of studying for school. A lot of college students listen to music while studying, and their choices in music style possibly have beginnings at a very young age. While our study attempts to explain what music is best for studying, this article explains why there may be fluctuations in our results and why our results might turn out the way they do. The study done in the article explores classical and jazz music in young children; this type of music is what a lot of kids are exposed to in order to grow and develop more healthily, as their parents might believe they would. Children also become aware of different musical styles at a young age; by being able to tell styles apart, our study becomes even more interesting. This study verifies that our results should differ between types of music because most college-age students should be able to discern the difference between all the different genres of music in the culture today.

O'Donnell, Laurence. "Music and the Brain". 2 November 2009 http://www.cerebromente.org.br/n15/mente/musica.html
This article tells of how music affects the brain and the body. It incorporates the reason that geniuses like Albert Einstein thought they were smart: they played musical instruments. Listening to different styles of music also causes changes in the body, including increase or decrease in pulse, breathing rate, and blood pressure. Studies have shown that an increase in blood pressure causes better functioning in the brain, and higher pressure can be induced by baroque (a type of classical) music. This is a helpful tool for discovering why a certain type of music may be better associated with higher recall and better memory. It can also be shown that baroque music activates both sides of the brain, which results in a better memory. This is very helpful to know so that we can possibly better predict which type of music will have the best results for recall in college students. However, this article also acknowledges that recall does not simply happen with music playing; there are other variables at stake when memorizing anything. Music does aid in memorization and recall, but it is not the sole factor that produces better memory. We need to take this information into account when we are conducting our study. This is why it may be best to take the average number of words recalled and why our sample group should be larger. Certain individuals memorize things differently; a smaller sample size may not give very consistent results. This article, in addition to focusing on types of music, looked at the tempo of the music and its effect on memory. We need to think about the tempos of our songs that we pick for the study because that may have an effect on recall, in addition to the style of the music.

The Effect of Rhythm and Tempo on Memory Recall. http://students.ou.edu/M/Justin.M.Matanane-1/rhythmrecall.html
This article actually is a study done by researchers at the University of Oklahoma. They actually did a very similar study to the one we are doing, but they only tested whether students studied better with or without music and they used two different tempos for music. Our study is a bit more complex than theirs, but this article shows how a report should look, and it is a good starting point for our research. However, it is not very specific, and it could definitely go more in depth; our study will have figures and more written descriptions of our process. The article described the ÒMozart process,Ó which includes the theory that listening to music while studying will help a student retain more of the information he or she is reading about. We are attempting to look at this same process, but our study is going more in depth with different musical styles and tempos. It was really interesting to us that the specific time that the study took place was listed in the procedure; we will need to take time of day and day of week into account when we do our study. It may be that some students function better at different times of the day or at specific days during the week, so we will need to be careful to eliminate these variables by conducting the study at the same time and day for each round of students. This way our data will be more consistent. This article also postulates that the type of music that the students listen to is irrelevant and that it is the tempo that matters; we are not sure we agree with this, so this is what our study will be revolving around. It may be possible for us to prove this author wrong, and so we will look at this article after our study to compare what we concluded with what he or she concluded.

Warren, Suzanne. "REMEMBER THIS: MEMORY AND THE BRAIN". Serendip. 2 November 2009 http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/biology/b103/f97/projects97/Warren.html
This article differentiates between short-term and long-term memory and describes the characteristics that each supplies to the working of the brain. This will be helpful as we consider the different aspects of the brain working in our study. We are interested in short-term memory in our research, and so we need to know how the brain works in forming memories, especially short-term ones. The article states that Òunless an individual pays attention to the image for about eight uninterrupted seconds to encode the stimulus into short-term memory, it will be lostÓ (Warren). Therefore, it may be a good idea for us to incorporate an eight-second interval between each of our slides so that the images will be effectively added into the study subjectsÕ short-term memory. However, this may be too long in our study in order for us to measure recall; the results we obtain may be too high for all styles of music if we give long amounts of time for each slide shown. It will probably be best to allow a much shorter time between each slide so that subjects only get a small increment of time to implement each slide into his or her memory. This will most likely give us more accurate results. This article also explains in an overview how the brain works to create a long-term memory from a short-term one. One theory is the memory gets played on a loop, and if it is played enough in the brain then it is converted to a long-term memory. This could be interesting if we did a follow-up study to see how many slides each subject remembers a week later. More importantly, this article explains how different memories are created and it gives us information about how we should go about making our slides for effective recall experimentation.

Wetter, Olive Emil, Fritz Koerner, and Adrian Schwaninger "Does Musical Training Improve School Performance?." Instructional Science: An International Journal of the Learning Sciences 37.4 (2009): 365-374. ERIC. EBSCO. Web. 3 Nov. 2009
This article includes a study of school-age children and how practicing music affects their school grades. It also studied other aspects of the childrenÕs lives in order to understand the lifestyles of the children who achieved the highest grades in school. We think this article will come in handy because it shows that there are multiple factors that need to be taken into account when completing this study. Students grow up with multiple different advantages and disadvantages that can directly correlate to how well they do in school, and in turn, how well their brains create memories and recall those created memories. The study performed in this article shows that students who study music have overall higher grades in every aspect of school (except for sports), while student who do not study music receive lower grades that even get steadily lower as they progress through school. Because studying music involves a lot of repetition and memorizing (both with music and remembering how to play the instrument), this activity in the brain may be transferred to the ability to memorize information in school, and therefore have a higher grade. This could be also used for our study in that music may cause activity in the brain to promote memorization and recall. The same areas of the brain that memorize music in musicians may also be applied to memorizing numbers or words on slides. We will also keep in mind that different students come from different backgrounds, and so not all of our results will be the same; it may be best to take the average of all the data compiled for each group in order to avoid discrepancies.

RESEARCH DESIGN
Our research design entails the use of five different songs of different genres of music, which are as follows:
¥ RAP/HIP-HOP: Put On (Young Jeezy & Kanye West)
¥ POP: Fingerprints (Katy Perry)
¥ HARD ROCK: Revenge I Seek (Bleeding Through)
¥ CLASSICAL: Clair de Lune (The APM Orchestra)
¥ A CAPPELLA: Signed, Sealed, Delivered (The Cheezies)
We will also be including a condition of silence as our control group. We intend to distribute a consent form at the beginning of our study to ensure that we have voluntary participation. Our experiment will take place in a classroom, if possible, where we can obtain the use of a projector in order to display our sequence of numbers to the group. This group will consist of fifty Miami University undergraduates, ranging in class from first-years to seniors of a variety of majors. We will gather preliminary data including each studentÕs class, gender, major, type of musical training or lack thereof, musical preference, and desired study conditions.

Our experiment will specifically consist of a PowerPoint of twenty individual slides, each containing a random number between zero and nine and displayed for two seconds. To determine if this is the best method, we will also conduct an additional trial on our class before performing the actual experiment. This trial will entail simply a slide consisting of a randomized sequence of twenty numbers, again between zero and nine, and will be displayed for a total of forty seconds. We will be conducting this initial experiment in order to determine if test subjects are better at memorizing the numbers when displayed individually for brief periods of time, or when displayed all at once and given time to study the list.

Once we have determined which method displaying the numbers is most effective, we will compile six separate PowerPoints, each with a different randomized sequence of numbers. We will display each slideshow to our sample for the forty second time frame, and each slideshow will be associated with a different type of musical condition or silence. We chose the numbers in each sequence based upon writing each number zero through nine on a sheet of paper and drawing them out of a hat with replacement of previously selected numbers.

After the recall procedure, we will administer a follow-up survey, which will consist of Likert scales ranging from Òstrongly disagreeÓ to Òstrongly agree.Ó The questions will address how the students perceived their performance under each condition, as well as rating each song/type of music. As our participants leave the room, we will distribute debriefing forms informing them of the purposes of our study and ways to contact us if any questions or concerns arise.
Our experiment will demonstrate statistically sound methods in that we will compile our final results in an SPSS program to analyze our experimental components. Our sample will show a normal distribution because we will have over thirty participants involved. We will also calculate the mean, standard deviation and conduct a Q-test in the case of any outliers for each individual listening condition.

In order to prevent threats to experimental validity such as maturation, the change in participants over the course of the experiment, we intend on giving the participants filler tasks in between each number sequence, which will be further determined at a later date.

MATERIALS & METHODS
In our experiment, we will need to use specific materials to carry out our research. For example, we will utilize a classroom with a projector and speakers in order to project our slideshows and our music. As aforementioned, we will also want to carry out our testing in a quiet room that wonÕt be subjected to too much outside noise that could impact our study, and therefore would like to use a classroom for our study. The only other resource we need is time, so we can fully carry out our experiment and have time to analyze our results to come to a conclusion that can answer our question about how music affects recall.

We will be involving the class in our study by making them preliminary test subjects. We will first test our experiment out on them as a single group, as a kind of practice before we perform our much larger, actual experiment. This way we are including our peers in the research process for our inquiry, and also giving ourselves a chance to work out any unforeseen kinks or problems in our research design before we test a larger sample size.

Our tentative research timeline is composed of the following goals:
November 4, 2009: preliminary experiment on fellow classmates
Week of November 16, 2009: conduct experiment
Week of November 30, 2009: analysis, conclusions, and final report
Week of December 14, 2009: present final project

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