Exploring children's recognition of familiar and cover versions of songs

Abstract

It is a common experience to have a feeling of familiarity without the ability to identify a previously experienced item or event–a phenomenon known as recognition without identification (RWI). This sense of familiarity depends on the degree to which features of an item or experience match stored memory traces; a better match yields a stronger feeling of familiarity.

While recognition of familiar items has been studied in other domains, far less is known about musical memory.

The goal of the project is to study the memory basis of familiar songs in children, specifically examining listeners’ memory of melodic contour and whether familiarity is affected by certain musical features or performance characteristics.

I will design a recognition task comparing listeners’ abilities to recognize different versions of familiar songs: (a) original melody-only, (b) inverted contour, (c) computer-synthesized instrumental, and (d) cover versions.

I hypothesize that differences in familiarity ratings between the original and the inverse version would indicate contour as a feature of song memory. I predict that the original, instrumental, and cover versions will have better identification rates than the inverted versions. I will also examine how familiarity ratings correspond to recognition performance. Higher familiarity ratings without accurate identification would indicate some degree of recognition memory for song features.

By identifying musical features salient for recognition, the study offers insights into the cognitive mechanisms underlying musical memory development in children, informing educational strategies and therapy by identifying elements of songs that are most effective for learning, memory, and music enjoyment.