Exploring How Environmental-Musical Context Change Affects Long-Term Memory

Previous research indicates that music can act as an environment in which a context-dependance can be observed. Orchestral music by Tchaikovsky was used to provide a context for a free recall task. Participants were randomly assigned to music or silent for study and for test. They studied 20 words, performed a 4-minute distraction task, and then were asked to recall the studied words. The results did not provide evidence that music acts as a context-dependent factor, but it did provide some support for a positive disruption effect. The study-silent/test-silent group performed significantly worse than the music-present groups. The evidence seems to suggest that when music is present during either study or test, but not both, memory benefits.