By Kiara Cain
Recently in The Swamp, junior Tucker Stratton conducted research for his AP Research class taught by Henri Loridans. Stratton’s goal was to discover if music affects how students are able to study.
“My study is trying to prove that different genres of music have different impacts on your memory. I chose this topic from my own experiences. I listen to music while I study and I’ve always wondered if music was helping.” Stratton says.
In order to conduct the research, Stratton chose students to participate from all grade levels. This allowed him to have a fair and even amount of higher and lower level students.
Stratton based his experiment on the Daneman and Carpenter Test. It is a test used by researchers as a way to test short term memory.
“I used this test because it was simple, quick, and could be paired with music, and other researchers have used this test as well.” Stratton says. “That last point is important because it gives me data that I can compare my data to.”
In order to carry out this experiment, Stratton was assisted by his six classmates. He also met weekly via Zoom with a mentor from Harvard.
Participating students were taken into a separate classroom in groups. They were assigned a number. Stratton and those assisting him sat with a participant and gave them cards to read. The task was to repeat back the last word of every sentence, with each card increasing in difficulty.
On day one there was no music but as each day went on, different music was played. This would help determine if music helped with memory and concentration.
After the research was conducted, Stratton found that classical music made the most difference in improving short term memory.
“I found that classical music was the only music genre to improve memory. Every other genre either decreased or stayed the same compared to the no music test.” He says.
This was Stratton’s first time doing a research study, and after comparing his results with other researchers he felt that his findings concurred with other researchers. Since he mixed music with the Daneman and Carpenter test, it is believed that he is the first person to do a study in this way.
Stratton plans to have a career in psychology, so he plans on carrying out more research projects like this one.
“If there was a piece of advice that’s just as important it is: don’t pick a project because it is easy; pick a project because you are passionate about it. If you don’t, you will dread the work every day.” Stratton says.