Effect of encoding processes on explicit and implicit remembering of melodies

This research aimed to explore memory for music within the transfer-appropriate processing (TAP) framework. According to TAP, a certain kind of initial processing is beneficial for later remembering if the type of memory test requires a similar type of processing. In Experiment 1, musicians and nonmusicians listened to a set of highly familiar melodies and applied different orienting tasks (OTs), two conceptual and two perceptual ones, while listening. The conceptual OTs comprised a mood judgment and a continuing the melody task, whereas the two perceptual OTs comprised a counting long notes and a contour tracing task. This was followed by an incidental recognition test. Nonmusicians and musicians recognized conceptually processed melodies better than perceptually processed ones, and musicians were more accurate than nonmusicians in their overall recognition performance.; In Experiment 2, only the mood and counting OTs were used, and presentation modality (aural or audiovisual) was added as a new variable to see whether audiovisual processing would further emphasize the effect seen in Experiment 1. Furthermore, there was a perceptual identification test to see whether perceptual processing especially of audiovisually presented materials would lead to better identification compared to the other conditions. The data showed some trends in line with the predictions but none were statistically significant. The only significant effect was a main effect for musicianship in recognition accuracy. A presentation modality*musicianship interaction in the recognition data indicated that the audiovisual presentation mode had a beneficial effect for musicians and a detrimental effect for nonmusicians. Surprisingly, the OT effect observed in Experiment 1 was not replicated.; Experiment 3 included only nonmusicians. Melody familiarity was added as a variable to see whether familiarity interacted with OT in recognition. Another goal of Experiment 3 was to see whether the OT effect observed in Experiment 1 could be "reobtained" when using a purely aural presentation mode again. Findings showed that highly familiar melodies were correctly recognized more than moderately and less familiar melodies, and furthermore, hit rates for mood-processed melodies were higher than for counting-processed melodies, given the melodies were highly familiar ones. The results are discussed within the TAP framework.