Music and Memory: Friends or Foes?

Music and Memory: Friends or Foes?

        Looking around the library at Mount Saint Mary College I can see three students with headphones in and four without. So which of these students is going to remember more? When I got the idea to research the correlation between memory and music I was thinking that the results would show a strong correlation between music and remembering less of what one studied. This was based off of the fact that I cannot listen to music while studying, writing, or reading. My ideas about music and memory have drastically changed though. While this study is broad and does not focus in on the beats per minute, words or no words in a song, or does not use reading or writing as the mode for judging memory, it does give a generalized view of the relationship which is more generalizable as not everyone studies the same material, or listens to the same music.

        To begin with, I posed a question: will listening to music affect memory? I hypothesized that yes, music would negatively affect memory. Next I asked 18 friends and family members to play a memory game so that I could collect data. The participants went to http://www.play.vg/games/52-Concentration.html and played the memory game four times. The first two times were practice rounds to eliminate the bias of naturally getting better the second time one plays. The third time was with music. The participant was allowed to choose their own music that they would normally study to. Lastly, the fourth round was played with no music. I recorded all of this data in a chart and it was concluded that my hypothesis was wrong. 11 of the 18 participants remembered more and faster with music than without. In retrospect, however, I suspect that if instead of a memory game with pictures I had used a reading comprehension task to assess memory that the results may have been different. As DeRosa and Abruscato discuss in our class textbook, Teaching Children Science: A Discovery Approach, “children love to touch, they also love to look at things, to smell them, to move them about and to twist and turn them. Children must develop habits of mind that go beyond their natural curiosity. Scientific inquiry requires careful, active observations of the details and connections of systems and events that we encounter, which often go unnoticed by casual observers. The experience you provide children can stimulate and strengthen connections among brain cells that reinforce learning” (DeRosa & Abruscato, 2010). By doing an experiment like this I was modeling and practicing the scientific method but through touching, listening, playing a game, researching a natural curiosity, and stimulating both sides of my brain. These are the types of experiments we need to assure our students are engaging in.

        This project helped to develop pedagogical knowledge in that I now see the huge value in a science fair. I am young enough that when I was in elementary school it was the beginning of the move away from science fairs and so I never participated in one until now. After creating my own project, viewing all of the projects in the Bishop Dunn Memorial School gymnasium, and reading various articles, I have been made aware of the huge value in science fairs. This is a development in my pedagogical knowledge because it has given me a large resource to use in teaching scientific inquiry and investigation. One advancement in particular is my new attention to statistics as they are involved in science fair projects. As Gonzalez-Espada describes in her article “Using Simple Statistics to Ensure Science-Fair Success”, it is statistics, especially those backed by the t-test, hold great value and show great understanding of the experiment and the scientific process.

I also added to my pedagogical knowledge the experience and feeling of what it is like to feel the nature of science on my own without any guidelines or suggestions as to what or how my project should be. This speaks to DeRosa and Abruscato’s comments on the nature of science based in exploration as a human endeavor. They discuss in their book how explanations are tentative and and subject to change, however, scientists do not change their explanations on a whim and that new information is always forming (2010). By doing this project I was able to add this pedagogical knowledge but growing up in school science was a fixed set of questions and answers so this knowledge was not old hat to me. Technology, which was at the center of my data formation in this project, opens up a whole new world of science and discovery as well as information. Throughout this whole course I have added to my pedagogical knowledge a wealth of technology sources, methods of teaching with technology, and how it aids and enforces learning in the classroom. Science, engineering, and technology are connected in ways that are inseparable in the classroom.

        Throughout the course of this project I gained science content knowledge, knowledge on the teaching of science, and learned of new tools to use. Being that I had never done a science fair project before this experience was full of new learnings. The first of these that was mastered was content knowledge. Content knowledge, as in science, was available for the taking all throughout this process. In surfing the internet for ideas, seeing the ideas in real life as I walked around, and then doing the actual project, I learned so much about conducting small scale research, recording information and eliminating additional variables, and presenting evidence visually in both a clear/academic way and an interesting/eye-catching way. I also learned even more as I walked around both the upper and lower grades science fairs and saw the presentations there. I read some projects and others were shared with me verbally through presentations but either way there was a lot to learn on many different subjects. The next mastered content was methods, or the way of teaching science. I had never participated in a science fair and so I had never thought to use one as a method for effectively teaching science. Through watching Mrs. Foster-Faith and Dr.Smirnova I learned so much about the way or method to teaching science through student generated ideas, projects, research, and largely independent work.

        This project could be easily adapted to use with 2, 3rd, 4th, or 6th grade students. The adaptations would include adding or subtracting variables that the students must attend to and what type of memory study is used. For 6th graders I would add variables such as they type of music listened to, the beats per minute of the song, and what setting the person was in. I would also have them see if there were differences between what was being memorized: memory game of images, reading comprehension, Facebook posts, etc. To make this a 2nd grade project, however, I would not have any of these additional variables or specifications. The 2nd grade students could just time people playing a memory game with and without music. According to the Next Generation Science Standards, students in all grades K-6 are taught on categories under the umbrella topic of Understanding about Nature of Science. Students explore scientific investigation, scientific knowledge based on empirical evidence, scientific knowledge as open to revision in light of new evidence, science models, laws, mechanisms, and theories that explain natural phenomena, science as a way of knowing, scientific knowledge assumes an order and consistency in natural systems, science as a human endeavor, and science addresses questions about the natural and material world. “Science, like all other learning, is a progression. We need time to process information. Learning progressions imply the deliberate and coordinated development of learning over time. Children learn science by doing science.” (DeRosa & Abruscato, 2010). By changing an activity to fit a grade level we are keeping the same concepts, nature, and engagement with science, just creating a developed and staggered experience of science throughout the grades. DeRosa and Abruscato make the point that yes, science is learned by doing science and understanding its nature, but science learning must be a progression and a development. This is why quality, inquiry-based, engaging science is integral at different levels throughout every age group or grade.

This project will help students learn how to generalize concepts of inquiry, scientific method, and critical thinking skills because it shows that students can take any question, interest, or problem they face and using the inquiry or scientific method/processes they can arrive at an answer, conclusion, or solution. For example, if a student has a parent who is always telling them to turn their ipod off while studying then they could perform this experiment and show their parents the result that more people remembered greater amounts, faster while listening to music than without. Science fair projects, in general, show students that the isolated concepts we teach in the classroom (inquiry, scientific method, critical thinking) are really not isolated at all as they can apply and be generalized to almost any aspect of life. “Assimilation is the reconciliation of new experiences and data with present understanding so that the new data support and deepen but do not change their fundamental mental model. Accommodation is when new evidence cannot be reconciled with prior understanding and mental models are forced to change. (DeRosa & Abruscato, 2010). This difference in accommodation versus assimilation speaks to generalizing concepts because the experiences we give students or ones they embark on themselves falls into one of these two categories. Either way, whether the concept is automatically assimilated or if the student needs to change their prior understanding and accommodate the information, the student is taking in their experience and new knowledge and will have it in their brain when confronting all other experiments, problems, or situations in the classroom and outside of it.  Isolation of these ideas is not possible.

As far as science content, this experiment teaches on the subject of biology, more specifically, the human brain. The brain can do more than one thing at a time, especially when it is something with a dichotomy much like studying in music. Music is a right brained activity while studying or memorizing is a left brained activity. By combining the two not only are students brains doing two things at once but they are fostering connections between the two parts of the brain which makes studying more effect, long term, and effective. In our course work we discussed in length how getting children engaged, active, moving, and responding evokes a better and more memorable learning experience. This concept was shown or proven in just a slightly different context through my science fair experiment. I would have students to this experiment before I open up a unit on the human brain and then ask students once they learned about the brain to reflect on why we started with this activity to allow them to make the connection about how the brain functions as a whole and in parts.

According to the standard for understanding the nature of science students must learn science as a way of knowing, scientific knowledge assumes an order and consistency in natural systems, science as a human endeavor, and science addresses questions about the natural and material world. By doing an experiment much like mine or my colleagues students will naturally understand and apply these objectives.

Bibliography

Abruscato, J., & DeRosa, D. A. (2010). Teaching Children Science: A Discovery Approach.

Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

Gonzalez-Espada. (n.d.). Using Simple Statistics to Ensure Science-Fair Success.

Retrieved April 27, 2016, from

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