A Study On The Effects Of Background Music On Memory

This study tries to find the effect of two different types of music on memory task through two experiments. A 2×3 design were employed by the two experiments, including three conditions (classic, pop, silent) and the participators' habits (having the habit of studying under background music, not having the habit of studying under background music) In experiment 1, 49 high school students and 57 university students were asked to learn nonsense characters and words in three conditions. Then the participators received a recognition test and a recall test for above characters and words. In experiment 2, the participators in experiment 1 were asked to learn two essays after two minutes' rest. Then they answered 4 choice questions used for the recognition test and 2 blank questions or short answers used for the recall test.The conclusions of two experiments were as follows:(1) Classic music had not any significantly positive effects; Pop song had significantly negative effects to some tasks.(2)For the high school students, the participators who have background music habit were more likely disturbed by background music than the ones who have not back ground music habit when they were learning nonsense materials.(3)The high school students were more likely disturbed by background music than the university students.(4)Participators' memory tasks of essays were more likely disturbed by background music than their memory task of nonsense materials.