Memory, 2015
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09658211.2015.1061012
Music evokes vivid autobiographical memories
Amy M. Belfi1,2, Brett Karlan2, and Daniel Tranel1,2,3
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1
Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Neuroscience, University of Iowa, 356 MRC, Iowa
City, IA, USA
2
Department of Neurology, University of Iowa College of Medicine, 2155 RCP, Iowa City,
IA 52242, USA
3
Department of Psychology, University of Iowa, E11 Seashore Hall, Iowa City, IA, USA
(Received 7 November 2014; accepted 5 June 2015)
Music is strongly intertwined with memories—for example, hearing a song from the past can transport you
back in time, triggering the sights, sounds, and feelings of a specific event. This association between music
and vivid autobiographical memory is intuitively apparent, but the idea that music is intimately tied with
memories, seemingly more so than other potent memory cues (e.g., familiar faces), has not been
empirically tested. Here, we compared memories evoked by music to those evoked by famous faces,
predicting that music-evoked autobiographical memories (MEAMs) would be more vivid. Participants
listened to 30 songs, viewed 30 faces, and reported on memories that were evoked. Memories were
transcribed and coded for vividness as in Levine, B., Svoboda, E., Hay, J. F., Winocur, G., &
Moscovitch, M. [2002. Aging and autobiographical memory: Dissociating episodic from semantic
retrieval. Psychology and Aging, 17, 677–689]. In support of our hypothesis, MEAMs were more vivid
than autobiographical memories evoked by faces. MEAMs contained a greater proportion of internal
details and a greater number of perceptual details, while face-evoked memories contained a greater
number of external details. Additionally, we identified sex differences in memory vividness: for both
stimulus categories, women retrieved more vivid memories than men. The results show that music not
only effectively evokes autobiographical memories, but that these memories are more vivid than those
evoked by famous faces.
Keywords: Music; autobiographical memory; episodic memory; sex differences; vividness
One of the most salient and evocative experiences
associated with music is hearing a song that unexpectedly triggers a distant memory. A strain of
“Knock Three Times”, for example, could
prompt a vivid image of lying in bed on a hot
summer night with the window open, listening to
the local AM radio station in your home town
when you were 13 years old. Strong associations
between music and vivid autobiographical memories are obvious—music frequently reminds us
of people, places, and specific events and experiences from our past. Nonetheless, it remains an
empirical question as to whether memories
evoked by music are more vivid than memories
evoked by other cues. In other words, while the
idea that music holds a particularly special connection to memories from our past is intuitively
appealing, the scientific basis for this impression
is minimal. While research suggests that music
evokes autobiographical memories that are
strongly emotional (Janata, Tomic, & Rakowski,
2007) and that persist even in persons with significant memory impairments (El Haj, Postal, &
Allain, 2012), the idea that music evokes
Address Corresponence to Amy M. Belfi Department of Psychology, New York University, 6 Washington Place, Room 275, New
York, NY 10003, USA. E-mail:[email protected]
© 2015 Taylor & Francis
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BELFI, KARLAN, TRANEL
memories that are more vivid than memories
evoked by other stimuli has not yet been tested.
Music-evoked autobiographical memories
(MEAMs) are often associated with strong
emotions such as happiness, excitement, and nostalgia (Barrett et al., 2010; Janata et al., 2007; Schulkind, Hennis, & Rubin, 1999). Illustrating this,
Janata et al. (2007) found that MEAMs in response
to popular music were rated as significantly
emotional and these emotions were experienced
strongly. When songs evoked strong emotions, participants were more likely to describe an autobiographical memory. Neuroimaging studies have
also indicated the emotional nature of MEAMs
and the capacity for music to evoke memories of
varying levels of specificity (Ford, Addis, & Giovanello, 2011; Janata, 2009). These studies suggest
reasons why music is a salient memory cue and
reliably evokes autobiographical memories.
Research focusing on clinical populations also
suggests that autobiographical memory retrieval
is facilitated by listening to music (El Haj, Postal,
et al., 2012). Foster and Valentine (2001) showed
that individuals with Alzheimer’s disease recalled
more personal details after listening to music
than after hearing white noise or silence. Irish
et al. (2006) gave individuals with Alzheimer’s
disease the Autobiographical Memory Interview
(Kopelman, Wilson, & Baddeley, 1989) either
while listening to a piece of music (Vivaldi’s
Spring movement from the Four Seasons) or
silence. They found that individuals with Alzheimer’s disease recalled more episodic details
during music listening, indicating that these memories were more vivid. While these studies suggest
that music evokes vivid memories even in individuals with severe memory disturbances, the music
used in these experiments was played in the background and not as an explicit memory cue. Therefore, although these results suggest that music
positively influences memory retrieval, they do
not indicate whether music-evoked memories are
distinct from memories evoked by other cues.
One novel way in which music is associated with
autobiographical memories is its ability to evoke
memories from multiple periods of time and be
transmitted across generations. Krumhansl and
Zupnick (2013) found that MEAMs exhibit multiple “cascading reminiscence bumps”. In this
study, young adults listened to music that was
popular during the previous five decades. Participants showed a typical “reminiscence bump” by
retrieving more autobiographical memories in
response to music from their childhood and
adolescence. This standard reminiscence bump is
the phenomenon whereby individuals recall disproportionately more autobiographical memories
of events that occurred between the ages of 10
and 30, as opposed to other lifetime periods
(Berntsen & Rubin, 2002; Rubin & Schulkind,
1997). In addition to the standard reminiscence
bump for popular music, participants also displayed a second reminiscence bump for music
that was popular when their parents were young
adults. The authors suggest that this “cascading”
reminiscence bump evoked by music from the
parents’ generation is one characteristic that sets
music apart from many other stimulus categories.
While this experiment investigated the frequency
with which music of varying time periods evoked
memories, the vividness of memories was not indicated. In the present study, we sought to investigate whether MEAMs are more vivid than
memories evoked from other stimuli. Although
research suggests that MEAMs may be distinct
from autobiographical memories evoked by
other cues, no direct comparison between music
and other memory cues has been conducted.
Here, we aim to test the hypothesis that MEAMs
are more vivid than autobiographical memories
evoked by other cues. Instead of comparing memories evoked while listening to music to those from
silence or noise, we sought to compare MEAMs to
a similar stimulus. To this end, we compared
MEAMs to memories evoked by photographs of
famous faces. Famous faces are a compelling comparison for several reasons: famous people and
famous songs are both specific, unique entities
(Belfi & Tranel, 2014); they are each associated
with a specific period of time; they are a part of
popular culture, ubiquitously experienced, and
highly familiar to the general population; and
famous individuals can be associated with autobiographical memories (Westmacott & Moscovitch,
2003). We chose not to use a more common
memory cue, such as cue-words, because they are
not as comparable to popular songs in these ways.
An additional reason for using famous faces as a
comparison is that pictures and music are both
external sensory cues which can evoke involuntary
autobiographical memories. Involuntary autobiographical memories are frequently retrieved in
response to external stimuli, such as sensory experiences, persons, music, and other media content
(Berntsen, 1996; El Haj, Fasotti, & Allain, 2012;
McDonald, Sarge, Lin, Collier, & Potocki, 2015;
Rasmussen, Johannessen, & Berntsen, 2014).
Since there are significant differences between
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MUSIC AND AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL MEMORIES
voluntary and involuntary memories (Berntsen,
1998; Berntsen & Hall, 2004; Hall et al., 2014;
Schlagman & Kvavilashvili, 2008), we selected pictures of famous faces as a comparable cue that
would not require voluntary memory retrieval.
This prevents a potential confound between cue
type and level of retrieval effort and allows for a
direct comparison between faces and music. We
predicted that autobiographical memories evoked
by music would be more vivid than those evoked
by faces.
In addition to our main analysis, we were also
interested in investigating potential sex differences
in autobiographical memory retrieval in response
to music and faces. Given previous research
suggesting sex differences in autobiographical
memory, we explicitly included sex as an independent variable in our analyses. For instance, it has
been shown that women recall a greater number
of autobiographical memories than men (Davis,
1999; Seidlitz & Diener, 1998) and these memories
are often more specific (Pillemer, Wink, DiDonato, & Sanborn, 2003). Women report more
vivid autobiographical memories than men when
memories are evoked by visual, odour, and word
cues (Goddard, Pring, & Felmingham, 2005).
There has been some conflicting evidence on sex
differences in autobiographical memory, such as
whether or not there are sex differences in the
temporal distribution of autobiographical memories (Janssen, Chessa, & Murre, 2005; Rubin,
Schulkind, & Rahhal, 1999). However, even
when behavioural differences are not seen, men
and women show differing patterns of neural
activity during autobiographical memory retrieval
(Piefke, Weiss, Markowitsch, & Fink, 2005;
St. Jacques, Conway, & Cabeza, 2011). Although
previous research does not provide a strong basis
for making specific predictions regarding possible
directions of sex differences for our manipulations
(i.e., how sex would influence face-evoked memories vs. MEAMs), we designed the experiments
with the intent to analyse potential differences
based on sex.
METHODS
Participants
Participants were recruited through advertisements in the local community and through a registry of research participants. Participants were
healthy adults (N = 30; 15 female and 15 male)
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aged 30–72 years old (M = 55.1, SD = 13.0). Data
were collected from one additional participant
but excluded because there were no memories
retrieved for any category of stimulus. Participants
had an average of 16.4 years of education (SD =
1.7) and an average Full Scale IQ of 113.8 (SD =
7.7). Full Scale IQ was approximated using the
Wechsler Test of Adult Reading (Wechsler,
2001). This study was approved by the Institutional Review Board and all participants gave
informed consent in accordance with the requirements of the Human Subjects Committee.
Our target sample size of 30 was determined by
conducting a power analysis based on data from a
similar study comparing memory vividness during
music and silence (El Haj, Clément, Fasotti, &
Allain, 2013). While our main analysis was to
investigate within-subjects differences in memory
vividness between music and face conditions, we
wanted a sample size with adequate power to
investigate potential interactions between sex
and condition. Therefore, we based our estimated
effect sizes on a study that investigated MEAMs
using a similar mixed design (El Haj et al., 2013).
The authors of this study reported effect sizes for
significant effects of group (η 2 = .64) and condition
(η 2 = .29), and a significant interaction (η 2 = .18).
We used G*Power software (Faul, Erdfelder,
Lang, & Buchner, 2007) to conduct a power analysis using the effect size from this interaction. This
resulted in a projected sample size of nine individuals in each group. Thus, our sample size of 30 is
adequate for the main objective of this study and
should allow for sufficient power to investigate
our additional interest in sex differences.
Stimulus selection
Music was chosen from the Billboard Hot 100
year-end charts between the years 1950 and
2013. A song database was created to include the
top 20 songs from each of these years. We selected
only the top 20 songs from each year to increase
the likelihood that participants would be familiar
with the songs. Songs were randomly selected
from this database for each participant based on
the years when the participant was between the
ages of 15 and 30 years old. For example, a 35year-old participant would hear songs from the
years 1993 to 2008, such as “The Macarena” and
“Hey Ya”. This age range was selected because
it corresponds roughly to the standard reminiscence bump (Berntsen & Rubin, 2002; Rubin &
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BELFI, KARLAN, TRANEL
Schulkind, 1997), and to maximise the likelihood
that participants would be highly familiar with
the songs. For example, a person’s favourite
movies, books, musical albums, and songs are
often those they were exposed to during this
period of their life (Holbrook & Schindler, 1989;
Janssen, Chessa, & Murre, 2007). Each song clip
was 15-seconds long and contained the chorus or
other highly recognisable parts of the song, as
determined by the audio sample provided for
each song on the iTunes music store (as in
Barrett et al., 2010; Janata, 2009; Janata, Tomic,
& Haberman, 2012).
Faces were chosen from the Iowa Famous Faces
test, which has been used extensively in previous
research and has substantial normative data
(Damasio, Grabowski, Tranel, Hichwa, &
Damasio, 1996; Damasio, Tranel, Grabowski,
Adolphs, & Damasio, 2004; Grabowski et al.,
2001; Tranel, 2009). The faces from this test
include individuals with various occupations (athletes, politicians, actors, etc.) who were popular
during a variety of time periods. In a sample of
90 healthy adults, these faces were correctly
named 85% of the time, indicating high familiarity
(Tranel, 2006). Each famous face was assigned to
particular years during which they were most
popular (e.g., when they were actively playing professional sports or holding political office, when
they had their top box-office grossing films, etc.).
For example, Bob Hope was assigned to the
1940s and 1950s. Faces were selected in the same
way as the music—based on when the participant
was between the ages of 15 and 30 years old. For
example, a 35-year-old participant would see
faces that were popular during the years 1993–
2008, such as Derek Jeter and Jennifer Aniston.
Each face appeared on the screen for 5 seconds.
Procedure
Participants listened to 30 songs and viewed 30
faces in a counterbalanced design. After each
stimulus, participants rated their autobiographical
association with the stimulus. An autobiographical
association was defined as the strength to which
the stimulus evoked autobiographical memories.
Participants rated their autobiographical association on a three-point scale: no autobiographical
association, somewhat autobiographical, and
strongly autobiographical. Participants were
instructed to select “somewhat” or “strongly autobiographical” only if the stimulus evoked an
autobiographical association with something they
personally experienced during their life. If the participant selected “no association”, they continued
on to the next stimulus.
If the participant selected “somewhat autobiographical” or “strongly autobiographical”, they
then verbally described the memory that was
evoked. At the start of the experiment, participants were instructed to provide as many details
as possible during the memory descriptions.
After each stimulus, however, participants were
simply asked to “describe the memory”, and
were given an unlimited amount of time to
provide their memory descriptions. After the participants completed their memory descriptions, the
experimenter provided a general probe (Levine,
Svoboda, Hay, Winocur, & Moscovitch, 2002).
This general probe served to provide the participant with additional time, if needed, to think of
more details to add to their memory description.
As in Levine et al. (2002), data from the initial
retrieval and from the general probe were combined. To preserve the involuntary nature of
these memories, participants were not given
specific probes. Memory descriptions were audio
recorded using a Sony Digital Voice Recorder,
model ICD-UX533.
Response coding
The recordings of the memory descriptions were
transcribed and coded (as in Levine et al., 2002).
Each memory was segmented into details (single
pieces of information) that were coded as either
internal or external. Internal details pertain to
the central memory and reflect episodic reexperiencing. Internal details were each categorised
into one of the following five mutually exclusive
categories: (1) events (e.g., happenings, actions
taken), (2) places (e.g., room, building, city), (3)
times (e.g., year, month, semester), (4) perceptions
(e.g., smells, sights, sounds), and (5) emotions/
thoughts (e.g., happiness, sadness) directly
related to the memory. External details do not
directly pertain to the memory and were each
categorised into one of the following four mutually
exclusive categories: (1) semantic statements (e.g.,
general knowledge or facts), (2) repetitions
(repeating previously stated information), (3)
external events (e.g., information about an event
not related to the present memory), or (4) other
details not related to the memory (e.g., metacognitive statements).
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MUSIC AND AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL MEMORIES
After coding each detail, internal and external
composite scores were created by tallying the
total number of internal and external details for
each condition within each participant. These
composite scores were then used to calculate a
ratio of internal/total details. This ratio provides
a measure of episodic detail that is unbiased by
the total number of details (Levine et al., 2002).
We then performed an arcsine transformation on
the internal/total ratio for each participant. This
procedure normalises the distribution to allow
analysis using paired-samples t-tests on the data
(Freeman & Tukey, 1950). This ratio is the main
variable of interest in the present study and was
one of two ways that was used to operationalise
memory vividness. A higher ratio of internal to
total details reflects a more vivid memory, or, a
memory that contains a greater proportion of
information that directly pertains to the memory
itself.
The second way that we operationalised
memory vividness was the number of perceptual
details. We calculated a composite score for perceptual details by tallying the total number of perceptual details for each condition within each
participant. We focused specifically on this
subtype of internal details because perceptual
details reflect sensory experiences such as sights,
sounds, and smells. A greater number of perceptual details therefore indicate a more vivid
memory.
Memories were coded by three trained raters.
Each memory was coded by only one rater. Memories from two pilot participants were coded by all
three raters and intraclass correlation was performed (using a two-way mixed effects model) to
assess interrater reliability. This amount of interrater reliability data is similar to that used in previous studies (Levine et al., 2002). Intraclass
correlation was performed on the internal and
external composite scores. The correlation coefficient for internal composite was .93 and for external composite was .88. These values reflect high
agreement among the three raters.
5
9.67]), t(29) = −3.02, p = .005, d = −.55 95% CI
[.16, .93]. We then analysed the ratings of autobiographical strength. Participants rated each
memory as “somewhat autobiographical” or
“strongly autobiographical”. There were more
memories rated as “somewhat autobiographical”
in the face (M = 9.4, SEM = 1.01, 95% CI: [8.59,
10.20]) than the music (M = 6.6, SEM = 0.69,
95% CI: [5.79, 7.40]) conditions, t(29) = −2.41, p
= .02, d = .44, 95% CI: [0.06, 0.81]. There were no
differences in the number of memories rated
“strongly autobiographical” between the face
(M = 3.0, SEM = 0.81) and music (M = 2.4, SEM
= 0.55) conditions.
Memory vividness—ratio of internal to
total details
Supporting our hypothesis, there was a significantly greater ratio of internal/total details in the
music (M = 0.84, SEM = 0.03; 95% CI: [0.78,
0.89]) than the face (M = 0.64, SEM = 0.05; 95%
CI: [0.58, 0.69]) condition. MEAMs had a significantly higher ratio of internal to total details
than face-evoked memories t(29) = 4.9, p < .001,
d = .89, 95% CI [.46, 1.37] (Figure 1).
Internal and external composite
scores
As a follow-up analysis, we looked at the composite scores for internal and external details.
There were no significant differences between
the total number of internal details for the music
RESULTS
Out of the 30 faces and 30 musical clips presented
to each participant, approximately 30% of these
stimuli evoked memories, although faces evoked
a significantly greater number of memories (M =
12.33, SEM = 1.33; 95% CI: [11.25, 13.40] than
music (M = 8.6, SEM = 0.84; 95% CI: [7.52,
Figure 1. Increased memory vividness for MEAMs. Memories evoked by music showed a significantly larger ratio of
internal to total details. Error bars represent 95% withinsubject confidence intervals (Baguley, 2012; Loftus & Masson,
1994).
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BELFI, KARLAN, TRANEL
(M = 27.8, SEM = 4.48) and face (M = 26.0, SEM =
4.21) conditions. There was a significant difference
between the total number of external details for
the music (M = 23.53, SEM = 4.16, 95% CI:
[12.55, 34.50]) and face (M = 61.63, SEM = 11.81,
95% CI: [50.65, 72.60]) conditions. There was a
significantly greater number of external details in
the face condition, t(29) = −4.28, p < .001, d = .78,
95% CI [.36, 1.18] (Figure 2).
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Memory vividness—number of
perceptual details
Although there were no differences between faces
and music in the total number of internal details,
we were interested in the type of details reported
in each condition. If MEAMs are more vivid
than face-evoked memories, we would expect
MEAMs to contain a greater number of perceptual or sensory details. We found that there were
significantly more perceptual details in the music
(M = 1.66, SEM = 0.53, 95% CI: [1.40, 1.91]) than
the face (M = 0.76, SEM = 0.23, 95% CI: [0.50,
1.01]) conditions, t(29) = 1.99, p = .05, d = .36,
95% CI [0.01, .73] (Figure 3).
Sex differences
Lastly, we investigated sex differences in autobiographical memory retrieval. We conducted a
mixed-design analysis of variance (ANOVA) to
investigate a potential sex effect on our main
dependent variable of interest, the ratio of internal
to total details. A mixed-design ANOVA with sex
as a between-subjects factor and condition as a
Figure 2. Total number of external details for music and faces.
Face-evoked memories contained a significantly larger number
of external details. Error bars represent 95% within-subject
confidence intervals (Baguley, 2012; Loftus & Masson, 1994).
Figure 3. Total number of perceptual details for music and
faces. MEAMs contained a significantly larger number of perceptual details. Error bars represent 95% within-subject confidence intervals (Baguley, 2012; Loftus & Masson, 1994).
within-subjects factor revealed a significant main
effect of sex, F(1,28) = 9.91, p = .004, h2p = .26,
95% CI [0.03, .47]. The interaction between sex
and condition was not significant (Figure 4).
DISCUSSION
In this study we investigated differences in autobiographical memories evoked by famous faces and
popular music. The total number of memories
evoked by these stimuli was near 30%, which is
consistent with previous research (Janata et al.,
2007). However, we found that faces evoked a significantly greater number of memories than music.
It may be the case that the faces used in the present
study were simply more familiar than the musical
cues, and therefore triggered memories more
often. Though familiarity and autobiographical
Figure 4. Sex differences in ratio of internal to total details.
Overall, women’s memories contained a significantly larger
ratio of internal to total details. Error bars are standard error
of the mean.
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MUSIC AND AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL MEMORIES
salience are somewhat correlated for memories
evoked by musical cues, familiarity with a song
does not necessarily mean that song will evoke a
memory. In addition, unfamiliar songs can at times
evoke autobiographical memories (Janata et al.,
2007). One possible explanation for our findings
that faces evoked a greater number of memories
could be that familiarity and autobiographical salience are more correlated in faces than musical
cues. Alternatively, faces could be more likely to
be associated with a particular context, for
example, watching Johnny Carson on TV in the
living room each night. While individuals may be
highly familiar with musical cues, the cues may be
less likely to be associated with a particular time
and place and therefore less likely to evoke a
memory.
In addition to investigating the number of memories evoked by music and faces, we assessed
aspects of the memories retrieved. We tested the
hypothesis that MEAMs are more vivid than autobiographical memories evoked by famous faces.
We assessed vividness in two ways: (1) by calculating the ratio of internal details over total details
and (2) the number of perceptual details. We
chose to assess vividness in these ways, as
opposed to directly asking participants to rate
the vividness of their memories (e.g., Janssen,
Rubin, & St Jacques, 2011), in order to assess the
qualities of the memories themselves as opposed
to the participants’ perceptions of their memories.
A rating of memory vividness would not provide
the detailed information about the qualities and
characteristics of the memories evoked by faces
and music. In addition, self-reported ratings of
vividness may not accurately capture the amount
of episodic information and detail contained in
the memories. An interesting question for future
research is to investigate the relationship
between self-reported ratings of memory vividness
and composition of internal and external details in
memory descriptions.
Supporting our hypothesis, we found that
MEAMs were more vivid than face-evoked memories in that they contained a greater proportion of
internal to total details as well as a greater number
of perceptual details. One explanation why
MEAMs are more vivid is that music may elicit
stronger emotional responses than faces. There is
an abundance of research indicating that music
evokes strong emotions (Juslin & Sloboda, 2010)
and these emotions can often be extremely pleasurable (Harrison & Loui, 2014). Therefore, it is
possible that the music in the present experiment
7
evoked strong emotional responses comparable
to those experienced during the original event.
Music may therefore evoke the emotions felt
during the time of the event, resulting in greater
feelings of reexperiencing and increased memory
vividness. Future studies could examine emotional
responses during MEAMs to determine whether
strength of emotional response is correlated with
memory vividness. Music is well known to elicit
highly pleasurable emotions that are correlated
with physiological responses such as heart rate
and skin conductance (Salimpoor, Benovoy,
Longo, Cooperstock, & Zatorre, 2009). If
emotion is central to the mechanism underlying
MEAMs, we would expect that degree of physiological response would be related to memory
vividness.
Additionally, functional neuroimaging research
has indicated that listening to pleasurable music
activates similar brain regions as other highly
rewarding stimuli (Blood & Zatorre, 2001; Salimpoor et al., 2013; Salimpoor, Benovoy, Larcher,
Dagher, & Zatorre, 2011). These regions, including the striatum, are also involved in associativelearning processes such as encoding the reward
value of a stimulus. For example, activity in the
striatum is associated with higher rates of associative learning (Williams & Eskandar, 2006). Music is
typically a highly rewarding stimulus and therefore
may be preferentially associated with events from
one’s lifetime. In contrast, famous faces may be
less inherently rewarding than music and therefore less likely to be associated with autobiographical memories. This strong association between
music and an event may consequently facilitate
autobiographical recall when later hearing the
same music.
While memories evoked by music were more
vivid than those evoked by faces, there were no
differences between conditions in the total
number of internal details. There was, however,
a significant difference between conditions in
the total number of external details. Faceevoked memories contained significantly more
external details than MEAMs. Face-evoked
memories typically contained substantial semantic information about the person pictured such
as his or her occupation or activities. Despite
being instructed to retrieve autobiographical
information, participants routinely focused their
autobiographical memories around semantic
information regarding these faces. For an
example of this and an example of a characteristic
MEAM, see Appendix.
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BELFI, KARLAN, TRANEL
One potential reason why face-evoked memories contain more external details is that faces
may evoke more general memories. Autobiographical knowledge typically falls into three levels
of specificity ranging from event-specific knowledge, to general event knowledge, and to knowledge of broad lifetime periods (Conway &
Pleydell-Pearce, 2000). Music seems to evoke
memories from all three levels with equal frequency (Ford et al., 2011). Here, faces may have
evoked a greater proportion of general or lifetime
period memories than musical cues. This could
explain why face-evoked memories contained
more external details than music-evoked memories. In the present study, participants rated
their memories as either “somewhat” or “strongly
autobiographical”. While these ratings do not
directly map on to levels of memory specificity,
our findings indicate that faces evoked a greater
number of memories that were rated “somewhat”
autobiographical than musical cues. This may
suggest that memories evoked by faces are more
likely to refer to general events or lifetime
periods than memories evoked by music. A question for future research would be to investigate
differences in levels of autobiographical memory
specificity evoked by various memory cues.
In addition to our main findings that MEAMs
are more vivid than face-evoked memories, we
also identified sex differences in autobiographical
memory retrieval. Regardless of the condition
under which memories were evoked, women
described more vivid autobiographical memories
than men. This is consistent with previous findings
showing that overall, women report more autobiographical memories than men and these memories
contain more specific episodes (Pillemer et al.,
2003). Previous research has also shown that
women recall more events than men and use significantly more words to describe these events (Seidlitz
& Diener, 1998). The authors suggest that men and
women use different cognitive styles to encode
memories, with women encoding them in more
detail. Piefke et al. (2005) also suggest that men
and women use different cognitive strategies
during autobiograhpical memory retrieval. Our
findings confirm sex differences in autobiographical
memory retrieval and enrich previous findings by
demonstrating that women not only produce more
memories than men, but that these memories are
more vivid. Whether this is due to differences in
encoding or retrieval strategies, however, is unclear.
An additional demographic variable that may
affect vividness of autobiographical memories is
age. For example, older adults report less specific
memories, memories with a lower proportion of
episodic details, and less autonoetic consciousness
than younger adults (Levine et al., 2002; Piolino
et al., 2006). A limitation of the current study is
that, while participants covered a relatively large
age range, overall the group was fairly homogenously middle-aged (only two participants under
40 years old and three above 70 years old). This
coincides with an additional limitation of the
study, which is a relatively small sample size. An
interesting question for future research will be to
investigate the effects of age on autobiographical
memories evoked by various cues. To investigate
the issue of age in the current sample, we split
our group (using a median split) into older and
younger groups. There were no significant differences between these two groups on any of our
dependent variables. To assess age as a continuous
variable, we conducted correlations between age
and all of our outcome variables, and found no significant correlations. Therefore, while age is an
important variable to consider in studies of autobiographical memory, our current sample does
not provide enough variability in the age range
to find significant age-related differences.
Alternatively, previous research has indicated
that involuntary autobiographical memories may
not show typical age-related changes. For
example, while voluntary autobiographical memories are less specific in older adults, there is no
age-related decrease in specificity for involuntary
memories (Schlagman, Kliegel, Schulz, & Kvavilashvili, 2009). Furthermore, age-related differences in autobiographical memory specificity may
be a function of task instructions. When instructed
to retrieve specific memories, older adults produced fewer specific memories than younger
adults. However, there were no age-related differences in memory specificity when participants were
not given explicit instructions to retrieve specific
events (Ford, Rubin, & Giovanello, 2014). In the
present study, participants were instructed to
report memories that spontaneously arose in
response to the stimuli, and were not given explicit
instructions as to the specificity of these memories.
Therefore, these memories were likely to be involuntary and may not be as susceptible to showing
age-related differences.
Our study is the first to compare autobiographical memories evoked by music to those evoked by
other cues. Our results indicate that memories
evoked by music are more vivid than those evoked
by pictures of famous persons, and that face-
MUSIC AND AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL MEMORIES
evoked memories contain more information not relevant to the central memory. This lends support to
the prevalent belief that music is especially suited
to evoke vivid autobiographical memories.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
We thank Brett Schneider, Amanda Owens, Jonathan
Schacherer, Jonah Hesjke, and Erin Evans for their
research assistance.
Downloaded by [New York University] at 06:40 11 August 2015
DISCLOSURE STATEMENT
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the
authors.
FUNDING
This work was supported by the generous donations of
56 donors using Experiment, an online research crowd
funding platform.
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Appendix
Characteristic MEAM: I saw him in concert in Cedar
Falls. And it was so cold that night that there was
snow on the roof of the dome. And the heat inside
cause the snow to melt and it rained inside the
MUSIC AND AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL MEMORIES
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auditorium dome or whatever. And I just remembered
that I loved it and it was great. Someone gave me the
tickets, and I remember Mick Jagger coming out on
the walkway over the crowd and just yelling. I liked it.
Characteristic face-evoked memory: Seeing Dennis
Rodman, I love basketball, he played basketball. He
played for the Bulls which I really enjoyed watching
11
the Bulls, and he was part of three championships with
them, so I have pretty fond memories of that time.
Before that he played for the Pistons and I hated his
guts and I thought he was horrible. But it just reminds
me of, you know, when I was younger, and watching basketball. And it was a good time to watch basketball
when the Bulls were actually a really good team.