Challenger Research Journal

Music, and its connection to memory, has been a topic of consideration among memory scientists for some years now. Practices such as music therapy take advantage of the apparent relationship between listening to music and increased cognitive performance. More recently, research aims to better understand why music has this effect, and what additional factors play into it. This paper details a within-subject study that aims to explore the effects of music as a stimulus for memory, taking into account differences in the subjects' exposure and background as musicians. Specifically, if a history in musicianship in one instrument will produce the same or different cognitive effects when listening to music of that type or music from an unfamiliar instrument. Through this study, we aim to determine whether there is a significant relationship between a person adept in a specific instrument (classical piano and classical violin) and their performance on a word recognition test. We hypothesized that there will be a positive impact on test results when taking the word recognition test using the more familiar instrument as the stimulus. This led to the question if cue-based relationships were present where listening to music activated the parts of the brain necessary for learning their instrument. Results showed that there was no relationship present, and even in some cases a significant decline after the stimulus was present. However, because of the nature of this study and its assumed errors, the results are acknowledged as inconclusive and were instead analyzed for further hypotheses or research questions on this subject matter.