How the mind is easily hooked on musical imagery

2009

Recent studies show that nearly all people living in western societies are affected by involuntary musical imagery, or “earworms”. It has been suggested that prior exposure to music is an important predictor of this phenomenon. In comparison, cognitive psychologists use the concepts of recency (serial position) and the priming effect (brief exposure) to describe similar memory features. The aim of this study was to explore the dynamics of involuntary musical imagery in relation to these memory concepts. Two experiments and a novel experimental manipulation to induce the experience were designed to investigate the topic. The experiments utilized a modified musical image scanning task to cue …