For my group's research project, we decided to look into memorization in word-image vs. word, as well as listening to certain types of music. Most students in college these days often spend their time listening to their favorite kind of music during their study times. Whether it's Weezer, Rihanna, AC/DC, or Eminem, everyone has a different enjoyment of music. For some, myself included, cannot stand listening to certain kinds of music while trying to study, read, or even remember essential things. On the other hand, some people need complete silence. It is a struggle for these people to have to deal with people who do not have this method of studying. Many years ago, music was often looked down upon during any type of learning time (Stoehr, 1994). The term "Don't study with the radio on." was used by the author's mother when he was very young. Unfortunately, the year then was in the 1930s, when the music availability, compared to now, is light years apart.
Listening to music can trigger specific spots in the brain to activate, causing a certain memory or spark to be engaged. Much like Adderall for someone with ADHD, music can calm the listener down and allow them to soak in knowledge easier or make it more difficult if the listener is displeased with the musical choice. In one article, the authors (Zhu, Myers-Levy. 2005) have a hypothesis about whether the type of background music in a travel agency ad will affect the listener enough to make them want to the company more for a certain type of music. Playing two different types of music, one energetic and moderately stimulating while the other was more sedated and calm, this gives the participants two completely different inputs on the commercial. Their results seemed to offer some valid insights into the hypothesis. Even though all their questions were not answered after their studies, it gave some important theoretical contributions.
Our first key independent factor was word image vs. word (Brimer and Mueller. 1979) also had the same idea as us in this study. Although theirs was many years before us, it had some very similar ideas and outcomes. While music can help people study or swing people's opinions about commercials, it also can be used to help determine memory studies. In (Brimer and Mueller. 1979) both researchers did a study that was similar to my group that involved studying the memory of the subjects. While their subjects didn't necessarily listen to music during the experiment, they did in fact, have to recall multiple words that were given to them before engaging in an activity. The main act of their research was to study for an immediate and delayed difference in responding to the words that they were given. Another study that was taken in this experiment that was unrelated to the original point was the relation between oral and written recalling. Before this test was taken, there was little information or research taken on this topic.
Music for my group's study was anot...
