Hello
I have a question regarding my Matura thesis, which looks at the influence of music on children’s memory. In music, there are the sub-areas of rhythm and tonality. If it has been established in principle that music has an influence on our memory, I wonder how this applies to these two aspects. Which aspect is crucial for memory: rhythm or tonality? Thank you very much for your time and help!
Hello
You’ve chosen a very interesting topic for your A-level dissertation! Here are a few thoughts of my own:
- Musical and linguistic understanding are often very closely linked. Therefore, this question also depends on the language the children speak, or the language in which they are primarily immersed. Children with a highly tonal mother tongue, such as Mandarin, are particularly responsive to tonality.
- This also raises the question of children’s musical training. In principle, a stronger effect would be expected in children who have a closer connection to music. Within this group, a further distinction must be made according to instrument or activity: compared with percussion instruments, string instruments require a high degree of sensitivity.
You can find a detailed study on this subject at this link: link.
In this study, three conditions for enhancing memory in children were tested:
- poems (purely rhythmic),
- chant (rhythmic singing/rap)
- melodic rhythm (tonality and rhythm).
Chants and melodic rhythm were the most effective. However, it is generally difficult to completely separate these concepts.
To answer your question: according to this study, it was shown that rhythm plays an important role, as this aspect was present in both conditions. However, rhythm is also present in the poems, so one cannot assume that this is the sole driving factor. Furthermore, tonality was not tested in isolation from rhythm to confirm that this aspect would be less significant. Rhythm is therefore certainly an integral part; whether it is stronger than tonality remains to be proven. These results suggest rather that rhythm and tonality cannot be so easily separated.
I hope this answer is of help to you!