Psychfest: The Sound of Memory - How Music Shapes What We Remember Without Realising

Written By Fourth Year Psychology Student, MIC.

Exploring the Hidden Power of Sound in Everyday Life.

Have you ever noticed how music is always playing in the background — in shops, on TV, or in advertisements — yet we rarely pay attention to it? The question then becomes: can something we barely notice still shape how we remember?

This kind of subtle, almost invisible influence is at the heart of my final-year psychology dissertation. It explores how hearing music in everyday environments can shape our memory without conscious awareness, through a process known as implicit memory.

What is Implicit Memory — and Why Does it Matter?

Memory isn’t just about consciously recalling facts or events. Much of what we remember operates beneath awareness. This is known as implicit memory — a system that influences our thoughts and behaviours without deliberate effort (Schacter, 1987; Tulving & Schacter, 1990).

In everyday life, implicit memory plays a powerful role in shaping preferences, decisions, and habits. In advertising, this is particularly important. Brands don’t just want you to remember them — they want to feel familiar, even when you weren’t really paying attention in the first place (North et al., 1999).

The Big Question: Does Music Enhance Memory?

While research suggests that music can influence cognition, the evidence is far from straightforward — particularly when it comes to implicit memory under low-attention conditions.

Some studies suggest that music can support performance by influencing mood and arousal (Thompson et al., 2001). Others highlight that background music can interfere with cognitive processing by increasing cognitive load or dividing attention (Kämpfe et al., 2011). Early claims, such as the “Mozart effect,” have also been widely debated, with later research suggesting that any benefits are short-lived and linked to temporary changes in arousal rather than lasting cognitive enhancement (Pietschnig et al., 2010).

Importantly, research in advertising contexts suggests that music can influence implicit learning even when individuals are not consciously attending to the stimulus. For example, Alexomanolaki, Loveday, and Kennett (2007) demonstrated that music embedded within advertisements can facilitate implicit memory for brand-related content under naturalistic viewing conditions.

However, such studies have often relied on indirect recall-based measures, making it unclear whether these effects extend to fully automatic processing. What remains unclear, therefore, is how different types of music influence implicit memory in realistic, everyday listening situations.

How I Investigated This

To explore this, I designed an experiment using a Lexical Decision Task (LDT) — a well-established measure of implicit memory (Meyer & Schvaneveldt, 1971; Neely, 1991).

Participants listened to an advertisement under one of three conditions:

• Voiceover and Classical Music
• Voiceover and Jazz Music
• Voiceover only (No Music Control)

After exposure, participants completed the LDT, where they quickly decided whether letter strings were real words or not. Some words were brand-related, while others were neutral.

The key measure was reaction time:

Faster responses to brand-related words indicate implicit priming, suggesting that the advertisement influenced memory without conscious awareness.

What Did I Find?

The results did not reveal statistically significant differences between the music conditions. While this might initially seem like a null finding, the pattern of results is still informative.

• Classical music showed a slight trend toward faster responses, potentially reflecting smoother cognitive processing.
• Jazz showed greater variability, possibly due to its unpredictability and increased cognitive demands.
• The voiceover-only condition provided a stable baseline. 

However, these differences were not strong enough to reach statistical significance.

So… What Does This Mean?

Rather than concluding that music has no effect, these findings highlight the complex and indirect nature of implicit memory.

Several factors may explain the outcome:

• The LDT primarily captures rapid perceptual processing, which may not reflect deeper encoding differences (Craik & Lockhart, 1972; Morris et al., 1977)
• The brief exposure to the advertisement may have limited memory formation
• Individual differences, such as musical preference, were not controlled for
• Music may influence attention and arousal, rather than directly enhancing memory 

In real-world settings — like shops or background TV — this suggests that music’s influence is subtle, context-dependent, and not always directly measurable.

Why This Matters

Understanding how music interacts with memory has meaningful real-world implications:

• Advertising: Insights into how brands create familiarity without direct attention
• Cognitive psychology: Greater understanding of how memory operates outside awareness
• Education: Raises questions about how background environments influence learning

Where Could This Go Next?

Future research could build on these findings by:

• Using multiple measures of implicit memory (e.g., word-stem completion tasks)
• Controlling for musical preference and familiarity
• Increasing exposure duration to better reflect real-world conditions
• Exploring emotional and attentional mechanisms more directly 

Final Reflection

This project reinforced an important idea: not all meaningful findings are statistically significant.

In everyday life, we are constantly surrounded by background music — in shops, on TV, and in advertisements — often without paying attention. Yet, these subtle exposures may still shape our perceptions and preferences in ways we don’t fully understand.

Music doesn’t simply “improve” memory. Instead, it interacts with cognition in nuanced and dynamic ways — quietly influencing what we remember, even when we weren’t paying close attention at all.

Further Information

For readers interested in exploring this topic further:

• Alexomanolaki, M., Loveday, C., & Kennett, C. (2007). Music and Memory in Advertising: Music as a device of implicit learning and recall. Music, Sound and the Moving Image, 1(1), 51-71.
• Craik, F. I. M., & Lockhart, R. S. (1972). Levels of processing: A framework for memory research. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 11(6), 671-684.
• Kämpfe, J., Sedlmeier, P., & Renkewitz, F. (2011). The Impact of Background Music on Adult Listeners: A meta-analysis. Psychology of Music, 39(4), 424–448.
• Morris, C. D., Bransford, J. D., & Franks, J. J. (1977). Levels of Processing Versus Transfer Appropriate Processing. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 16(5), 519–533.
• Neely, J. H. (1977). Semantic priming and retrieval from lexical memory: Roles of inhibitionless spreading activation and limited-capacity attention. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 106(3), 226–254.
• Schacter, D. L. (1987). Implicit Memory: History and Current Status. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 13(3), 501-518.
• Thompson, W. F., Schellenberg, E. G., & Husain, G. (2001). Arousal, Mood, and the Mozart Effect. Psychological Science, 12(3), 248–251.
• Tulving, E., & Schacter, D. L. (1990). Priming and Human Memory Systems. Science, 247(4940), 301–306.