Music training and rate of presentation as mediators of text and song recall

The present research addresses whether music training acts as a mediator of the recall of spoken and sung lyrics and whether presentation rate is the essential variable, rather than the inclusion of melody. In Experiment 1, 7 8 undergraduates, half with music training and half without, heard spoken o r sung lyrics. Recall for sung lyrics was superior to that for spoken lyric s for both groups. In Experiments 2 and 3, presentation rate was manipulate d so that the durations of the spoken and the sung materials were equal. Wi th presentation rate equated, there was no advantage for sung over spoken l yrics. In all the experiments, those participants with music training outpe rformed those without training in all the conditions. The results suggest t hat music training leads to enhanced memory for verbal material. Previous f indings of melody's aiding text recall may be attributed to presentation ra te.