Knowledge Bank

Most research on music and language learning examines music as a sum of many parts. The current study draws from the ideas of Lawson-Adams et al. (2022) by splitting music into two main components: rhythm and melody. In this study, participants learned 21 novel word and object pairs presented in three conditions (Spoken, Chanted, Sung). Participants viewed one of three videos which trained them on the 21 word-object pairs, seven in each condition. Following the video, participants completed a word-object association test which asked them to match the correct picture to each novel word. Participants viewed the same video and completed a second association test, then completed a yes/no test. Results indicated no significant effect of condition. However, there were main effects of musicianship, in which musicians scored higher regardless of condition, and test block, indicating learning over time.