Abstract:
The aim of the current study was to examine the effect of background music on memory in people with and without musical training. 45 native Dutch participants were tested on a continuous recognition memory paradigm in which Dutch spoken sentences were presented together with background music, for which the congruency and lag value was manipulated.
The results showed that accuracy was influenced by both the lag and the congruency in background music for both presentations of a spoken sentence. Performance was higher for the congruent condition (same background music) than for the incongruent condition (different background music), suggesting that speech and background music are collectively stored in working memory. In addition, a lower lag value resulted in a higher accuracy on the task. Finally, performance was not influenced by musical training, although this lack of an effect could have been due to methodological limitations.
