Goucher Alum is Lead Author on Music and Memory Article
Sarah Lummis, a 2017 Goucher graduate and psychology major, recently published an article in Psi Chi’s Journal of Psychological Research.
The article, titled Lyrical Memory: Mnemonic Effects of Music for Musicians and Nonmusicians, is co-authored by Dr. Jennifer McCabe, Abigail Sickles (’16), Rebecca Byler (’16), Sarah Hochberg (’17), Sarah Eckhart (’16), and Corrine Kahler (’16) as authors. The study examined the effects of music on the ability to recall song lyrics as well as whether musical expertise is associated with greater recall performance. As predicted, participants showed better recall performance in the music-based encoding task. Interestingly, musicians performed better in both the music and non-music tasks, and both musicians and nonmusicians experienced the music-based encoding task as carrying greater time pressure. The article also discusses some interesting potential applications of the study’s findings in education. Congratulations to Sarah Lummis and all other contributors for their excellent work!
The article is available to read online via Psi Chi here: https://c.ymcdn.com/sites/www.psichi.org/resource/resmgr/journal_2017/SummerJN17_Lummis.pdf