Musical expertise shapes visual-melodic memory integration
Music can act as a mnemonic device that can elicit multiple memories. How musical and non-musical information integrate into complex cross-modal memory representations has however rarely been investigated. Here, we studied the ability of human subjects to associate visual objects with melodies. Musi...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Frontiers Media S.A.
2022-10-01
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| Series: | Frontiers in Psychology |
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| Online Access: | https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.973164/full |
| _version_ | 1797990877411409920 |
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| author | Martina Hoffmann Martina Hoffmann Martina Hoffmann Alexander Schmidt Alexander Schmidt Christoph J. Ploner |
| author_facet | Martina Hoffmann Martina Hoffmann Martina Hoffmann Alexander Schmidt Alexander Schmidt Christoph J. Ploner |
| author_sort | Martina Hoffmann |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Music can act as a mnemonic device that can elicit multiple memories. How musical and non-musical information integrate into complex cross-modal memory representations has however rarely been investigated. Here, we studied the ability of human subjects to associate visual objects with melodies. Musical laypersons and professional musicians performed an associative inference task that tested the ability to form and memorize paired associations between objects and melodies (“direct trials”) and to integrate these pairs into more complex representations where melodies are linked with two objects across trials (“indirect trials”). We further investigated whether and how musical expertise modulates these two processes. We analyzed accuracy and reaction times (RTs) of direct and indirect trials in both groups. We reasoned that the musical and cross-modal memory demands of musicianship might modulate performance in the task and might thus reveal mechanisms that underlie the association and integration of visual information with musical information. Although musicians showed a higher overall memory accuracy, non-musicians’ accuracy was well above chance level in both trial types, thus indicating a significant ability to associate and integrate musical with visual information even in musically untrained subjects. However, non-musicians showed shorter RTs in indirect compared to direct trials, whereas the reverse pattern was found in musicians. Moreover, accuracy of direct and indirect trials correlated significantly in musicians but not in non-musicians. Consistent with previous accounts of visual associative memory, we interpret these findings as suggestive of at least two complimentary mechanisms that contribute to visual-melodic memory integration. (I) A default mechanism that mainly operates at encoding of complex visual-melodic associations and that works with surprising efficacy even in musically untrained subjects. (II) A retrieval-based mechanism that critically depends on an expert ability to maintain and discriminate visual-melodic associations across extended memory delays. Future studies may investigate how these mechanisms contribute to the everyday experience of music-evoked memories. |
| first_indexed | 2024-04-11T08:42:25Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-caa5e8d7c5064d8d84e45f577af318dd |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 1664-1078 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-04-11T08:42:25Z |
| publishDate | 2022-10-01 |
| publisher | Frontiers Media S.A. |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Frontiers in Psychology |
| spelling | doaj.art-caa5e8d7c5064d8d84e45f577af318dd2022-12-22T04:34:07ZengFrontiers Media S.A.Frontiers in Psychology1664-10782022-10-011310.3389/fpsyg.2022.973164973164Musical expertise shapes visual-melodic memory integrationMartina Hoffmann0Martina Hoffmann1Martina Hoffmann2Alexander Schmidt3Alexander Schmidt4Christoph J. Ploner5Berlin Center for Musicians’ Medicine, Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Berlin, GermanyHanns Eisler School of Music Berlin, Kurt-Singer-Institute for Music Physiology and Musicians’ Health, Berlin, GermanyDepartment of Neurology, Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Berlin, GermanyBerlin Center for Musicians’ Medicine, Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Berlin, GermanyHanns Eisler School of Music Berlin, Kurt-Singer-Institute for Music Physiology and Musicians’ Health, Berlin, GermanyDepartment of Neurology, Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Berlin, GermanyMusic can act as a mnemonic device that can elicit multiple memories. How musical and non-musical information integrate into complex cross-modal memory representations has however rarely been investigated. Here, we studied the ability of human subjects to associate visual objects with melodies. Musical laypersons and professional musicians performed an associative inference task that tested the ability to form and memorize paired associations between objects and melodies (“direct trials”) and to integrate these pairs into more complex representations where melodies are linked with two objects across trials (“indirect trials”). We further investigated whether and how musical expertise modulates these two processes. We analyzed accuracy and reaction times (RTs) of direct and indirect trials in both groups. We reasoned that the musical and cross-modal memory demands of musicianship might modulate performance in the task and might thus reveal mechanisms that underlie the association and integration of visual information with musical information. Although musicians showed a higher overall memory accuracy, non-musicians’ accuracy was well above chance level in both trial types, thus indicating a significant ability to associate and integrate musical with visual information even in musically untrained subjects. However, non-musicians showed shorter RTs in indirect compared to direct trials, whereas the reverse pattern was found in musicians. Moreover, accuracy of direct and indirect trials correlated significantly in musicians but not in non-musicians. Consistent with previous accounts of visual associative memory, we interpret these findings as suggestive of at least two complimentary mechanisms that contribute to visual-melodic memory integration. (I) A default mechanism that mainly operates at encoding of complex visual-melodic associations and that works with surprising efficacy even in musically untrained subjects. (II) A retrieval-based mechanism that critically depends on an expert ability to maintain and discriminate visual-melodic associations across extended memory delays. Future studies may investigate how these mechanisms contribute to the everyday experience of music-evoked memories.https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.973164/fullmusical memoryvisual memorymemory integrationmusicianshipassociative inference |
| spellingShingle | Martina Hoffmann Martina Hoffmann Martina Hoffmann Alexander Schmidt Alexander Schmidt Christoph J. Ploner Musical expertise shapes visual-melodic memory integration Frontiers in Psychology musical memory visual memory memory integration musicianship associative inference |
| title | Musical expertise shapes visual-melodic memory integration |
| title_full | Musical expertise shapes visual-melodic memory integration |
| title_fullStr | Musical expertise shapes visual-melodic memory integration |
| title_full_unstemmed | Musical expertise shapes visual-melodic memory integration |
| title_short | Musical expertise shapes visual-melodic memory integration |
| title_sort | musical expertise shapes visual melodic memory integration |
| topic | musical memory visual memory memory integration musicianship associative inference |
| url | https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.973164/full |
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