Memory for frequency of hearing popular songs

In two experiments college students were asked to provide situational frequency estimates of 10-s excerpts from rock songs. In both experiments familiarity of the musical selections heard one, two, three, or four times was varied. In Experiment 2 the nature of instructions given to subjects prior to presentation of the musical excerpts was also manipulated. Across both experiments subjects' estimates were less accurate for unfamiliar than for familiar rock music. In Experiment 2 instructions to remember frequency, as well as general memory instructions, resulted in better memory for presentation frequency than did instructions to "ignore" music while working on math problems. Memory for situational frequency was also related to knowledge of rock music as defined by subjects' ability to identify the titles and artists of the presented songs. The present pattern of results with popular music is viewed as similar to that obtained in experiments investigating memory for frequency of verbal stimuli. Although providing support for an automatic processing view of frequency encoding, the results also implicate meaningful elaboration of stimuli as an important determinant of memory for frequency of events.