You Can Learn to Remember: Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life pdfdrive com

memory and music
M
any people prefer to read or study in silence, while others favour some kind
of background music. Although we might think of music (especially rhythmic
rock) as hostile to concentration, it has been shown that in certain circumstances
music can create an atmosphere that encourages mental absorption. In the 1960s
the Bulgarian psychologist Georgi Lozanov found in an experiment that when
slow Baroque music was played, some people showed greatly improved learning
compared with others who had learned in silence or to the accompaniment of
other musical genres. This and further scientific investigations have shown that
the ideal music for learning (and so for optimum recall) has a slow, relaxing
tempo of one beat per second.
You could test this yourself: try memorizing a random list of 15 numbers
while listening to a slow movement by, say, the composers Handel, Bach or
Vivaldi. Then try to memorize another list of 15 numbers in silence, and
compare your success in both trials. The experiment is crude (there are many
other factors at work to influence how much you can recall accurately), but you
may be pleasantly surprised to find that music appears to help your ability to
remember.
However, tempo is not the only aspect of music that is relevant in this
respect. High-frequency sounds have been found to stimulate electrical activity
in the brain, increasing alertness, and creating a state of mental readiness to store
information. By contrast, low-frequency sounds are likely to make us feel
sluggish and badly prepared for memorization.
staging a memory concert
EXERCISE EIGHT

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This exercise will help you to choose the music that you find conducive to
memorization. Bear in mind the points about tempo and pitch opposite.
1. Look through your music collection and play various relaxing slow-tempo
pieces that make you feel at ease with yourself. They might be pieces that have