The Famous Melodies Task
Department
Engineering Management and Systems Engineering
Major
Engineering Management
Research Advisor
Belfi, Amy M.
Advisor's Department
Psychological Science
Abstract
Famous musical melodies have been used to investigate processes such as naming abilities in patients with aphasia and memory in patients with Alzheimer’s disease. However, there is no normed set of musical melody stimuli, preventing consistency across studies. The goal of the present work was to create a standardized stimulus set of famous musical melodies. This research has resulted in a normed set of musical stimuli for researchers to use in future studies. A range of famous musical melodies (N=109) were rated and characterized on naming ability, familiarity, age of acquisition, valence and arousal by a large online sample (N=206). In addition to providing normative ratings for each stimulus, we investigated the relationships between these variables: Valence and arousal were positively correlated, while age of acquisition was negatively correlated with both familiarity and naming. Overall, these results will provide researchers with a standardized and openly available set of musical stimuli to be used in future work.
Biography
Kaelyn, an undergraduate student at Missouri S&T, has a great interest in both engineering and neuroscience. For her high school senior thesis project, she chose to study the effects of music on the brain in Alzheimer’s and Dementia patients. Her interest with the subject led her to become a research assistant at the university for Dr. Amy Belfi. Together, they are exploring the effects of music and the brain. While working to prepare the research for peer-reviewed scientific journals, Kaelyn will continue to pursue her Engineering Management degree with a minor in Cognitive Neuroscience with plans to graduate in the year 2020.
Research Category
Social Sciences
Presentation Type
Poster Presentation
Document Type
Poster
Award
Social science poster session, Second place
Location
Upper Atrium
Presentation Date
16 Apr 2019, 9:00 am - 3:00 pm
The Famous Melodies Task
Upper Atrium
Famous musical melodies have been used to investigate processes such as naming abilities in patients with aphasia and memory in patients with Alzheimer’s disease. However, there is no normed set of musical melody stimuli, preventing consistency across studies. The goal of the present work was to create a standardized stimulus set of famous musical melodies. This research has resulted in a normed set of musical stimuli for researchers to use in future studies. A range of famous musical melodies (N=109) were rated and characterized on naming ability, familiarity, age of acquisition, valence and arousal by a large online sample (N=206). In addition to providing normative ratings for each stimulus, we investigated the relationships between these variables: Valence and arousal were positively correlated, while age of acquisition was negatively correlated with both familiarity and naming. Overall, these results will provide researchers with a standardized and openly available set of musical stimuli to be used in future work.
