Nowadays, music is popular amongst college students.

It is unusual for students to not be

around music due to the increased portability of music devices and availability of free music
on the internet (Roy, 2009).

Background music influences memory. In an immediate recall test, it was found that it is best
to play the same music during the activity itself and during the recall phase as the music
serves as a retrieval cue (Smith, 1985).

The melody of a song can facilitate learning and recall; however, when the melodies of the
verses were altered, the subjects remembered less and demonstrated that if the context is not
the same music can hinder learning. Hence, the melody of a song contributes to the learning
of words. (Wallace, 1994).

There are different proposals as to why music aids with memory for text. According to
Samson and Zatorre (1991), music employs various encoding mechanisms and stores music
in a different part in the brain, therefore, hearing the same melody can assist with the retrieval
process.

Listening to classical music during learning improves intelligence and memory and this can
be attributed to the “Mozart Effect”, but some studies have been unsuccessful in replicating
these findings and the functional relationship of music to reward processing has not yet been
assessed (Rauscher et al., 1993).

The objective of this study is to determine whether individuals who listen to music during the
experiment can perform better than those who did not when it comes to memorizing specific
words in sentences. It is hypothesized that the group who listened to music during the
activity will have a better performance and a mean score that is at least nine.

Rauscher, F. H., Shaw, G. L., & Ky, K. N., (1993). Music and Spatial Task Performance.
Nature, 365, 611.
Roy, S. E. (2009). The effects of different types of music on cognitive processes. National
Undergraduate Research Clearinghouse. Retrieved November 4, 2019, from
http://clearinghouse.missouriwestern.edu/manuscripts/304.php
Samson, S., & Zatorre, R. J. (1991). Recognition Memory for Text and Melody of Songs
After Unilateral Temporal Lobe Lesion: Evidence for Dual Encoding. Journal of
Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 17(4), 793-804.
Smith, S.M. (1985). Background music and context-dependent memory. American Journal of
Psychology, 6, 591-603.
Wallace, W. T., (1994). Memory for Music: Effect of Melody on Recall of Text. Journal of
Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition. 20:1471 - 1485.

Ellison, A. F. (2017). Short-Term Memory Capacity and Recall of Students with and without
Intellectual Giftedness: An Empirical Inquiry. Dissertations. 1464.
Escera C., Corral MJ., & Yago E. (2002). An electrophysiological and behavioral
investigation of involuntary attention towards auditory frequency, duration and
intensity changes. Journal of Cognitive Brain Research 14: 325–332.
Frith, S. (2001). Nobody likes pop, especially me. The Cambridge Companion to Pop and
Rock, p.94.
Lee, F. J., & Taatgen, N. A. (2002). Multitasking as skill acquisition. Proceedings of the 24th
Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, 572–577.

Short-term memory is the storage of memory that is initiated by sensory perception. It usually
maintains approximately 8 items of information for a range of 0-18 seconds (Ellison, 2017).
Pop music as defined by Collins English Dictionary is a music of general appeal, especially
among the youth. It originated as a distinctive genre in the 1950s and is generally
characterized by a strong rhythmic element and the use of electrical amplification.
Auditory distraction is caused by auditory distractors that deviate from the acoustic
environment and captures the attention of an individual (Escera et al., 2002).
Multitasking is the ability of a person to handle the demands of multiple tasks simultaneously
in the same general time period (Lee &Taatgen, 2002).