The Impact of Classical Music and Pop Music on Memory Retention among College Students

Abstract

Music is part of an individual's everyday living. Some studies show that classical music has a better effect on cognitive abilities while some studies recommended to further investigate the other genres effect on individuals' memory. This study focuses on the effects of pop and classical music on memory retention among college students. In this experiment, participants are divided into two groups: experimental group A which is under the treatment of classical music, and experimental group B for pop music. Each group has an equal number of participants. The experiment was conducted on a population of 60 college students for the initial study and 32 students for the follow-up study. The result shows that there is a significant difference between the two groups in both the initial and follow-up studies. A follow-up study was made to further investigate the effect of both genres on the memory retention of the students. Interestingly, the experiment reveals that pop music has a better effect compared to classical music. Researchers recommended that future studies may investigate other types of music genres to further assess the effect of music on memory retention.