Why Are We Better At Remembering Vocal Melodies Than Instrumental Tunes?

By Matthew Warren When it comes to memory for music, humans show an interesting quirk: we’re better at remembering melodies that are sung by voice, compared to those played on an instrument. Even a melody sung without any lyrics — just a series of la la las, for instance — becomes lodged in our memory in a way that a tune played on the piano, say, does not. Now a new study published in Cognition has looked into why our memory is so much better for sung melodies. Researchers have suggested that listening to a voice singing a melody leads us to perform “subvocalisations” — internal speech that involves tiny movements of the muscles involved in speaking (you’re probably doing it right now as you read this text). But we can’t mimic an instrumental piece in the same way. After all, it’s easy to repeat “la la la” in your head, but not to reproduce the sound of piano keys. Psychologists already know that this kind of silent rehearsal boosts memory for words — and that memory is impaired if we speak or make movements of the mouth and tongue, which interferes with these subvocalisations. So, theorised Michael Weiss and colleagues at the University of Montreal, if a similar process is responsible for our superior memory for vocal melodies, then people’s memory should be compromised if they make other mouth movements or sounds while listening. In the first study, the team asked 38 participants to listen to 24 melodies, which were based on B...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Memory Music Source Type: blogs