The effect of background music on the recognition memory of spoken sentences

The aim of this study is to investigate whether individuals can use background music as a facilitative cue for sentence recognition by testing if the music is stored in memory along with sentences. It focuses on the context congruency effect, especially encoding specificity and context-dependent memory. Sixty native Dutch participants were tested on a continuous recognition memory paradigm in which Dutch sentences were presented in background music and repeated with the same or different music after a lag of four, eight, or 16 items. The results demonstrated a recognition benefit for sentences presented in the same background music during both encoding and retrieval (congruent condition), compared to sentences accompanied by different background music at encoding and retrieval (incongruent condition). In addition, sentence recognition accuracy decreased with increasing lag. Taken together, these results demonstrate that hearing sentences in the same background music has a beneficial effect on recognition memory, suggesting integral processing of sentences and background music in memory.