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Memory of Music and Poetry: Keeping Details over Time
It seems to be well-established that short-term memory for detailed information declines over time, especially with additional material presented during the delay. For music, we have reported experiments showing lack of decline, and even improvement, for the memory of musical information. Listeners heard the beginnings of musical pieces, of which one of the initial phrases was tested later. The music continued, and memory was tested after delays up to 30 sec with a repetition of the target, a similar, or a different lure. Discrimination performance (particularly discrimination between targets and similar lures) remained strong and even improved with increasing delay. This effect disappeared when the delay was silence or filled with sound patterns breaking the musical continuity. Based on this data of music, we investigated memory of fine surface details for poetry and prose materials with the same experimental methods. For prose, short-term memory performance for detailed information declines over time, replicating previous findings. For poetry, we observed a lack of decline for memory for surface details, similar to the data obtained for musical material. The data for music and poetry suggest a particular role played by temporal organization and rhythmic structure in short-term memory.
a light lunch will be served
