Melodies are not a useful mnemonic cue for immediate word recall regardless of familiarity

Mnemonic devices paired with a musical melody have long been used as memory aids. Although this perceived phenomenon has been recognized in previous studies, research is mixed on the effectiveness of utilizing music to improve learning and memory. In this study, we tested the effects of unfamiliar and familiar melodies on the memorization of unrelated word lists compared with a spoken control condition. Participants heard word lists with two-syllable words of mixed positive, negative, and neutral valence either spoken, sung to a familiar melody (e.g. Yankee Doodle), or sung to an unfamiliar melody. After hearing each list, they were asked to freely recall the words in any order and were then asked to complete an old–new recognition task. In two experiments, we found spoken text to outperform (Experiment 1 recall and recognition, Experiment 2 recognition) or equal (Experiment 2 recall) the various sung text conditions. These results indicate that regardless of familiarity, melodies may be more distracting on initial presentation, due to working memory capacity limits. Our results thus suggest that at least for short-term recall of unrelated word lists, the colloquial belief of music aiding memory does not hold true.