THE EFFECTS OF UNVOCALIZED MUSIC ON SHORT-TERM-MEMORY

The studies reported here investigated the role of background music in verbal processing. The experiment was a partial replication of Salame and Baddeley (1989), where the effect of music on the recall of digit s, was examined, but included an additional key condition where partic ipants heard instrumental music without the words usually associated w ith it. In this case we used nursery rhymes. In addition, articulatory suppression was manipulated as a tool to look at the role of working memory in the task. The relationship between long-term memory and work ing memory was further explored by using an implicit memory task to ex amine verbal memory effects for words associated with the music but no t actually heard. The results indicated that background, instrumental music, long-associated with words, significantly impairs concurrent ve rbal processing. These long-term memory effects on working memory were , however, not associated with implicit memory effects, and no priming was observed.