An experimental study on the effect of background music on memory recall among medical students

Abstract

Introduction: The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of background music on short-term and long-term memory recall and to find out which type of background music aids in the process of recalling. Methodology: Two hundred medical students were divided into four groups (fifty in each group). For all groups, the same set of words was projected with different background music and no music. Two-min time was given to memorize twenty words; they were asked to recall and write down the words within 2 min. Same participants were called back after 1 week and asked to recall and rewrite the same words, along with the same background music to which they were previously exposed. The number of words remembered by them was obtained for comparing short-term memory and long-term memory using the SPSS software. Results: Data were analyzed using the one-way ANOVA. The categorical values were described as median. Group A (no music) has obtained the highest score for both short-term and long-term memory with the median of 15 and 10, respectively. Group C (country music) obtained the lowest score with median of 11 (short-term memory) and 3.5 (long-term memory). There was statistically significance difference between Group A and C (P = 0.000), Group B (instrumental music) and C (P = 0.000), and Group C and D (rock music) (P = 0.000). Conclusions: The results show that music has an impact on learning and decreases the memory recall as highest scores were obtained for memory recall in participants who were not exposed to any background music.