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Authors: Benedict Carey
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others took it with the Mozart; and others in silence. Likewise for those who studied with Mozart or in silence: They tested either in the same condition, or one of the other two. Nothing else changed.
Nothing, that is, except their scores.
Smith found that those who studied with Milt Jackson playing and took the test with the same music recalled twenty-one words on average—twice as many as those who studied with Jackson and took the test to Mozart, or in silence. Similarly, those who studied with Mozart recalled nearly twice as many words with Mozart playing than in silence or with the jazz in the background.
The punch line: Of those who studied and tested in the same condition, the silence-silencegroup did the worst. They recalled, on average, about half the words that the jazz-jazz or classical-classical groups did (eleven versus twenty). This is bizarre, and it raised an unexpected question: Could quiet somehow be inhibiting memory?The answer was no. If it had, then those who’d studied with jazz would have done worse taking the test in silence than with Mozart (vice versa, for those who’d studied with classical). They hadn’t.
What to make of this, then? The higher test scores square with reinstatement theory: The background music weaves itself subconsciously into the fabric of stored memory. Cue up the same music, and more of those words are likely to resurface. The lower scores in the quiet room (after quiet study) are harder to explain. Smith argued that they may be due to an absence of cues to reinstate. The students “do not encode the absence of sound any more than they might encode the absence of any type of stimulus, such as pain or food,” he wrote. As a result the study environment is impoverished, compared to one with music in the background.
By themselves, experiments like Smith’s and the others don’t tell us how to study, of course. We can’t cue up our own personal soundtrack for an exam, and we certainly can’t retrofit the exam room with the same furniture, wallpaper, and ambience as where we studied. Even if we could, it’s not clear which cues are important or how strong they really are. Still, this research establishes a couple of points that are valuable in developing a study strategy. The first is that our assumptions about learning are suspect, if not wrong. Having something going on in the study environment, like music, is better than nothing (so much for sanctity of the quiet study room).
The second point is that the experience of studying has more dimensions than we notice, some of which can have an impact on retention. The contextual cues scientists describe—music, light, background colors—are annoyingly ephemeral, it’s true. They’re subconscious, usually untraceable. Nonetheless, it is possible to recognize them at work in our own lives. Think of an instance in which you do remember exactly where and when you learned something. I’m not talking about hearing you made the high school all-star team or got chosen prom queen, either. I mean a factual, academic, semantic memory, like who assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand, or how Socrates died and why.
For me, it’s a late night in 1982, when I was studying for a test in the university’s math building. The buildings were open all night back then, and you could walk in and take a classroom for yourself, spread out, use the blackboard, and no roommates bursting in with beer or other temptations. I did it all the time, and sometimes the only other person in the place was an old guy roaming the halls, disheveled but kindly, a former physics teacher. He would wander into my classroom occasionally and say something like, “Do you know why quartz is used in watches?” I would say no, and he would explain. He was legit, he knew his stuff, and one night he strolled in and asked whether I knew how to derive the Pythagorean theorem using geometric figures. I did not. The Pythagorean theorem, the most famous equation in
Nothing, that is, except their scores.
Smith found that those who studied with Milt Jackson playing and took the test with the same music recalled twenty-one words on average—twice as many as those who studied with Jackson and took the test to Mozart, or in silence. Similarly, those who studied with Mozart recalled nearly twice as many words with Mozart playing than in silence or with the jazz in the background.
The punch line: Of those who studied and tested in the same condition, the silence-silencegroup did the worst. They recalled, on average, about half the words that the jazz-jazz or classical-classical groups did (eleven versus twenty). This is bizarre, and it raised an unexpected question: Could quiet somehow be inhibiting memory?The answer was no. If it had, then those who’d studied with jazz would have done worse taking the test in silence than with Mozart (vice versa, for those who’d studied with classical). They hadn’t.
What to make of this, then? The higher test scores square with reinstatement theory: The background music weaves itself subconsciously into the fabric of stored memory. Cue up the same music, and more of those words are likely to resurface. The lower scores in the quiet room (after quiet study) are harder to explain. Smith argued that they may be due to an absence of cues to reinstate. The students “do not encode the absence of sound any more than they might encode the absence of any type of stimulus, such as pain or food,” he wrote. As a result the study environment is impoverished, compared to one with music in the background.
By themselves, experiments like Smith’s and the others don’t tell us how to study, of course. We can’t cue up our own personal soundtrack for an exam, and we certainly can’t retrofit the exam room with the same furniture, wallpaper, and ambience as where we studied. Even if we could, it’s not clear which cues are important or how strong they really are. Still, this research establishes a couple of points that are valuable in developing a study strategy. The first is that our assumptions about learning are suspect, if not wrong. Having something going on in the study environment, like music, is better than nothing (so much for sanctity of the quiet study room).
The second point is that the experience of studying has more dimensions than we notice, some of which can have an impact on retention. The contextual cues scientists describe—music, light, background colors—are annoyingly ephemeral, it’s true. They’re subconscious, usually untraceable. Nonetheless, it is possible to recognize them at work in our own lives. Think of an instance in which you do remember exactly where and when you learned something. I’m not talking about hearing you made the high school all-star team or got chosen prom queen, either. I mean a factual, academic, semantic memory, like who assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand, or how Socrates died and why.
For me, it’s a late night in 1982, when I was studying for a test in the university’s math building. The buildings were open all night back then, and you could walk in and take a classroom for yourself, spread out, use the blackboard, and no roommates bursting in with beer or other temptations. I did it all the time, and sometimes the only other person in the place was an old guy roaming the halls, disheveled but kindly, a former physics teacher. He would wander into my classroom occasionally and say something like, “Do you know why quartz is used in watches?” I would say no, and he would explain. He was legit, he knew his stuff, and one night he strolled in and asked whether I knew how to derive the Pythagorean theorem using geometric figures. I did not. The Pythagorean theorem, the most famous equation in
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