Divided Attention With Long-Term Memory: Recollection and Familiarity for Musical Melodies

Objective: Test whether the well-established effects of divided attention 1, 2. (DA) found with non-musical (i.e., verbal and pictorial) materials generalized to musical melodies. Background: Few studies have used melodies to test recognition models (e.g., DPSD). Parks et al.2 showed stimulus complexity alters source memory reliance on recollection (R) and familiarity (F). Method: Used a 2 (attention) x 2 (melody type) mixed design with an old-new recognition test to compare DA effects across well-known and novel melodies. Experiment 1: Applied an n-back task to split participants’ attention; no significant DA effect was observed. Experiment 2: Shortened melody length and added a simultaneous DA task to address ceiling performance issues from Experiment 1.