Involuntary musical imagery as a component of ordinary music cognition: A review of empirical evidence

Abstract

Involuntary musical imagery (INMI) refers to a conscious mental experience of music that occurs without deliberate efforts to initiate or sustain it. This experience often consists of the repetition of a short fragment of a melody, colloquially called an "earworm." Here, we present the first comprehensive, qualitative review of published empirical research on INMI to date. We performed an extensive literature search and discovered, in total, 47 studies from 33 peer-reviewed articles that met the inclusion criteria for the review. In analyzing the content of these studies, we identified four major research themes, which concern the phenomenology, dynamics, individual differences, and musical features of INMI. The findings answer many questions of scientific interest-for instance, what is typical in terms of INMI frequency, duration, and content; which factors influence INMI onset; and whether demographic and personality factors can explain individual differences in susceptibility and responses to INMI. This review showcases INMI as a well-established phenomenon in light of a substantial body of empirical studies that have accumulated consistent results. Although the populations under study show an unfavorable bias towards Western, educated participants, the evidence depicts INMI as a universal psychological phenomenon, the possible function of which we do not yet fully understand. The concluding section introduces several suggestions for future research to expand on the topic.

Spontaneous mental replay of music improves memory for incidentally associated event knowledge.

“…In general, INMI has not been cast and examined explicitly as a memory phenomenon, though existing work tentatively supports the notion that the strength of memory and the frequency of INMI for specific pieces of music are related (see Liikkanen & Jakubowski, 2020, for a recent review of the literature). For example, greater amounts of music exposure produce higher rates of INMI (Byron & Fowles, 2015), and participants tend to experience more INMI for well-known music than for novel music (Hyman et al, 2013).…”

The Idiosyncrasy of Involuntary Musical Imagery Repetition (IMIR) Experiences

“…Advancements in naturalistic probe and self-caught experience sampling methods have since led to increased study of both voluntary and involuntary musical imagery as they are retrieved (i.e., occur) in everyday life (Bailes, 2006;Beaty et al, 2013;Cotter & Silvia, 2017;Jakubowski et al, 2018). Lately, the main focus of research has been on involuntarily retrieved musical imagery forms (Liikkanen & Jakubowski, 2020;Wammes & Barus ˇs, 2009). These are similar to other cognitive forms such as involuntary autobiographical memories (Vannucci et al, 2019) that are proposed to be universal, frequent, and a basic mode of remembering, rather than an indication of pathology (Berntsen, 2010).…”

Phantasmagoria in Composition: Some Mental and Social Dynamics of Composition in Traditional Turkish Music

“…INMI, başlatmak veya sürdürmek için kastî çabalar gerektirmeden zihinde meydana gelen, bilinçli bir müzikal tecrübeyi tarif eder. Bu deneyim genellikle bir müzik eserinin küçük bir ezgi parçasının tekrarlanması şeklindedir ve "earworm" (kulak kurdu, Türkçe karşılığı olarak "bir ezginin dile dolanması durumunun nesnesi" tanımı önerilebilir) olarak ilgili literatürde tanımlanmıştır (Liikkanen & Jakubowski, 2020, s. 1195. Musical imagery (müzikal imgelem) ya da daha açık bir ifade şekliyle "içsel müzik" (Cotter, Christensen, & Silvia, 2019, s. 489) (Cotter, Christensen, & Silvia, 2019, s. 63-65) materyal oluşturabilir bir unsurdur.…”