Working Memory in Music: A Theoretical Model

Abstract

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. University of California Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Music Perception: An Interdisciplinary Journal.Many psychologists have accepted a dual memory system with separate short-and long-term storage components. More recently, the concept of working memory, where short-term memory is composed of both storage and processing segments, has been considered. Baddeley (1990) proposes a model for working memory that includes a central executive controller along with two slave systems: the phonological loop and the visuospatial sketch pad. The model allows for both storage and manipulation of information. However, this model does not seem to account adequately for musical memory (Clarke, 1993). Through a review of relevant literature, a new model is proposed in which an additional slave system is added to the Baddeley model to account for musical information. Consideration of this kind of cognitive processing is important in understanding the significant demands placed on working memory in such activities as taking music dictation, where there would be a tradeoff between storage and processing functions. music psychologists have accepted a dual memory system similar to the model of Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968), in which there are separate short-and long-term storage components of information. Recently, many psychologists have addressed the concern that shortterm memory (STM) may be in itself made up of more than one element; STM may consist of both storage and processing components -the composite unit labeled working memory.Baddeley (1990) proposed a widely supported and important model for working memory that includes a central executive controller along with two slave systems: the phonological loop and the visuospatial sketch pad. This model allows for both storage and manipulation of information. The phonological loop is made up of two parts: a phonological store and an articulatory control process based on inner speech. This subsystem is responsible for the coding of speech, and presumably other sound information, whereas the visuospatial sketch pad centers around visual information.The primary question to be addressed in formulating this new model, Requests for reprints may be sent to William L.

Suppression effects on musical and verbal memory

“…In sum, although domain-specific storage or rehearsal mechanisms for music (Berz, 1995) are possible, a simpler account of these findings is that the same mechanisms are responsible for the storage and rehearsal of verbal material and auditorily encoded music, at least for participants with sufficient experience in both domains. Individual differences are prominent in memory for visually presented music that includes both visuospatial and auditory features, as is indicated by the visual interference and suppression effects reported here.…”

“…Some have proposed separate working memory processes for music (Berz, 1995;Pechmann & Mohr, 1992). Others have proposed that similar working memory processes account for many types of auditory information, including musical tones (Elliott & Cowan, 2005;Jones & Macken, 1993;Salame & Baddeley, 1989).…”

“…These alternative depictions, however, do not make specific predictions for memory for music versus speech. Berz (1995) argued that working memory for musical material could operate independently of working memory for verbal material. He proposed an additional slave system that encodes music in a separate working memory store.…”

Dynamics of brain activity underlying working memory for music in a naturalistic condition

“…He found differences in the nature of both the processing and storage of musical stimuli. According to Berz, most compelling evidence for a separate musical component in Baddeley's multicomponent model of WM is the phenomenon of the unattended music effect, this is, unattended instrumental music would cause same disruptions on verbal performance as would unattended speech if there was one global store for both (Berz, 1995). items) onto an unlimited set of activated LTM representations (Cowan, 1995(Cowan, , 2005.…”

Working Memory for Pitch, Timbre and Words

“…Our understanding of auditory WM and whether there are differences for the processing of different auditory materials (e.g., speech and music) is still elusive. Previous findings suggest that auditory WM is not a unitary system (e.g., Berz, 1995;Pechmann & Mohr, 1992;Schulze, Zysset Mueller, Friederici, & Koelsch, 2011). Our present study set out to investigate whether (i) the phonological loop, a WM component known to process verbal information (Baddeley, 2012), is also processing nonverbal auditory information (tones and timbre) and (ii) auditory WM differs between stimuli that can be internally rehearsed (words, tones) and stimuli that are more difficult to rehearse (timbre).…”