Peachey, Diane, and Au, Agnes (2012) Does musical training enhance spatial memory abilities? In: Combined Abstracts of 2012 Australian Psychology Conferences. p. 54. From: 39th Australasian Experimental Psychology Conference, 12-15 April 2012, UNSW, Sydney Australia.

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Abstract

Over the last twenty years various studies have been conducted on the Mozart Effect, whereas does listening to Mozart enhance various other abilities including spatial memory. On the basis that music shares some cortical representation with language in regards to pitch, syntactic and semantic processing, and that music training enhances one's aptitude for spatial ability and spatial temporal reasoning, this study investigated if there was an effect of musical training, other than what students learn in a typical school curriculum, on sentence comprehension and spatial working memory. This was measured in two groups of undergraduate students, thirteen of whom had musical training and twenty seven controls who undertook a musical abilities test, a spatial working memory test and a test on sentence comprehension. The results showed no significant difference in overall musical ability, however the musically trained group had a trend to perform better on melodic organisation. Results also showed that no significant differences in sentence comprehension and spatial working memory. The sensitivity of the tests used and the use of undergraduates may explain the lack of significant findings.

Item ID:	23810
Item Type:	Conference Item (Abstract / Summary)
ISBN:	978-0-909881-00-9
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Additional Information:	In addition to the published abstract, the presentation given is attached to this record.
Date Deposited:	14 Jan 2013 02:45
FoR Codes:	17 PSYCHOLOGY AND COGNITIVE SCIENCES > 1701 Psychology > 170101 Biological Psychology (Neuropsychology, Psychopharmacology, Physiological Psychology) @ 100%
SEO Codes:	97 EXPANDING KNOWLEDGE > 970117 Expanding Knowledge in Psychology and Cognitive Sciences @ 100%
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