{"id":2206,"date":"2015-11-24T14:00:06","date_gmt":"2015-11-24T19:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/?p=2206"},"modified":"2017-06-27T14:21:33","modified_gmt":"2017-06-27T18:21:33","slug":"it-must-be-something-in-the-way-she-sings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/2015\/11\/24\/it-must-be-something-in-the-way-she-sings\/","title":{"rendered":"It must be something in the way she sings!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Screen<\/a>So it\u2019s a Sunday afternoon and you are walking to lunch, the library, or the gym, and all of a sudden you start to sing the words to a song and it seems to come out of nowhere! Has this ever happened to you? I can testify to this and say that numerous times I find myself singing a song and I have no idea why. In fact, why do we still remember childhood songs such as \u201cthe wheels on the bus go round and round\u201d or start singing a song we once loved in the 8th<\/sup> grade? The idea that song melodies seem to stick in our memory for long periods of time is an interesting concept.<\/p>\n

Weiss et al., 2012, investigated the impact that melodies have on our memory. In their study, a group of participants listened to melodies, either vocal or instrumental, and were later asked to recall what they had heard. The participants listened to melodies from four categories: voice, piano, banjo, or marimba. In addition, the participants had to rate whether they felt happy, sad, or neutral while listening to the melody. They completed a recognition task in which they heard the same 16 melodies and then a set of 16 new melodies. They were asked to rate which ones were old or new. The results of their study concluded that the melodies that had been presented vocally to the participants were better remembered than those that were presented instrumentally, even if the participant liked an instrument more than a vocal melody. There was no difference of recognition or liking among the instrumental timbres.<\/p>\n

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When thinking about the results of Weiss et al., 2012, why then are people able to remember vocal melodies better than instrumental melodies? Well, it all has to do with memory! Memory is a complex process that involves multiple components working together. The Multi-store Model of Memory by Atkinson and Shiffrin, created in 1968, shows a great example of this process.
\n\"Screen<\/a>The diagram shows how the different parts of memory work together including sensory memory, short-term memory (STM) and long-term memory (LTM). Within these three stages, there are also processes that include how we initially take in the information, called encoding, how we keep that information in memory, called storage, and finally, how we are able to use that information after it is stored in STM, called retrieval. Through these components of memory I will explain why vocal melodies are remembered best.<\/p>\n

When we first hear a melody, certain stimuli of that melody such as pitch, volume, tone, and the verbal language make its way to our brain. The quick exposures to these stimuli that we have are immediately captured in our sensory memory. Our sensory memory takes in the stimuli in its raw form from our environment to process. For auditory sounds, our echoic memory store captures the words and sounds of the song. There are also memory stores for visual stimuli and a haptic store for touch and sensory information. The echoic memory store is specifically for auditory stimuli. The duration of this sensory memory store is about 3-4s so we must transfer the information in order to keep it around! How might we keep the information around and relevant?<\/p>\n

There are some benefits to remembering a vocal melody; we organize the words presented to us so we can understand what the song is about, therefore we pay attention to what we are hearing and assign value to the melody. By assigning value and paying attention to the melody, this enables us to transfer it to our STM. The pattern that the melody creates is presented to us as noise or frequency and our STM preserves an exact copy. We process the melody at a deeper level and therefore it is stored in STM. Also, songs are relatable to our lives so we tend to make more associations with a song when we listen to it. For example, if I was going through a break-up I might expect what Taylor\u00a0\"Screen<\/a> Swift\u2019s new song might be and this would enable me to have prior knowledge about the song and again I will assign meaning to it. Another benefit of a vocal melody is the repetition and how we may continuously try to repeat the lyrics to ourselves over and over again. I can also testify that I have recently done that to Adele\u2019s newest song \u201cHello.\u201d The repetition helps to solidify the meaning of the melody; by repeating it and rehearsing it, we are retrieving it from our LTM, and this allows us to remember the melody much better. The idea that melodies are catchy and prompt us to repeat and re-sing them all the time is actually beneficial to us! We are able to retrieve the song from our LTM and make it available for us to sing and remember. That might be why sometimes you start to sing your favorite pop song from 8th<\/sup> grade. Additionally, motor neurons are associated with how we learn a melody. When we practice by repetition and rehearsing, this triggers neurons to fire together. After that they have a habit of firing together again and again. Stronger connections are made between neurons helping us to create a pattern when we are learning the specific melody.<\/p>\n

There is other evidence that shows we remember vocal melodies better. A study by Levitin & Cook in 1996 found that adults are able to remember tempos and the pitch level of their favorite songs. This demonstrates that since a melody has a certain tune to it, people are more likely to remember other aspects of the melody besides the lyrics. The previous research and the way our memory stores information provides sufficient evidence to Weiss\u2019s study of why we remember a vocal melody better than an instrumental melody. However, Weiss et al. also had other ideas of why we might be better able to recognize vocal melodies. On a biological level, vocal melody could evoke increased arousal within us which in turn could result in a greater depth of processing, enhancing our memory for details of the melody. \u00a0This could also be a plausible explanation because as humans we have the innate ability to react to things that are verbally presented to us. This is also a unique way of looking at why we would remember vocal melodies in a neurological way.<\/p>\n

To conclude, instrumental melodies would not be as effective in helping us remember melodies because they do not encompass language. Language and words are important when we go through the process of remembering a song. \u00a0So the next time you find yourself beginning to sing when you\u2019re out grocery shopping, just know that your memory makes it possible for that song melody to pop up randomly and this can sometimes be an embarrassing situation! Don’t worry, it happens to\u00a0the best of us.<\/p>\n

To read the abstract of Weiss et al., 2012 study click\u00a0here<\/a><\/p>\n

For the Levitin & Cook 1996 study click\u00a0here<\/a><\/p>\n

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References<\/p>\n

Levitin, D. J., & Cook, P. R. (1996). Memory for musical tempo: Additional evidence that auditory memory is absolute. Percep- tion & Psychophysics, 58, <\/em>927\u2013935.<\/p>\n

Weiss, M. W., Trehub, S. E., & Schellenberg, G. E. (2012). Something in the Way She Sings: Enhanced Memory for Vocal Melodies. Psychological Science, 23(10), 1074-1078. <\/em>doi: 10.1177\/0956797612442552<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So it\u2019s a Sunday afternoon and you are walking to lunch, the library, or the gym, and all of a sudden you start to sing the words to a song and it seems to come out of nowhere! Has this ever happened to you? I can testify to this and say that numerous times I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5068,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[80217,80215],"tags":[45],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2206"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5068"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2206"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2206\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2216,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2206\/revisions\/2216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}