Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Degree

Master of Science

Program

Psychology

Supervisor

Dr. Albert N. Katz

Abstract

In Study 1, undergraduate students rated popular music songs on several factors. A database of knowledge was created for popular music autobiographical memory (AM) cueing research. Study 2 examined the role of emotional experience and relevance associated with a popular music AM cue on recalled AMs. In Phase 1, undergraduate participants described AMs to short music clips or a blank computer screen (control). In Phase 2, participants answered questions about these AMs. In Phase 3, participants rated musical clips (including Phase 1 stimuli). Unexpectedly, music-cued memories were less salient and did not differ emotionally from control-cued, but contained more perceptual and leisure content. When examining only participants cued by music, the emotional experience associated with listening to the cue was congruent with that of the produced memory. In addition, memories evoked to highly relevant music were rated as more salient and emotional than those evoked to less personally relevant music.

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