The Led Zeppelin Effect

Overview

Objectives/Goals The objective of this project was to determine how different types of background music affect memorization skills of high school students. A prior study involving only classical music (#The Mozart Effect#) suggested that classical background music helps memorization skills. I wanted to expand this study and try to draw conclusions that might apply to normal studying habits. Methods/Materials Five memory tests, using the placement of cards, were done on ten high school students, ages fifteen to seventeen. The tests were identical with the exception of different types of background music playing on the second, third, and fourth tests. No background music played during the first and fifth tests. Mozart (classical) was played during the second test, The Eagles (easy listening) during the third, and Led Zeppelin (hard rock) during the fourth. The subjects tried to memorize the placement of fifteen playing cards mounted on boards during each test, and their correct scores were recorded. Results When the high school students listened to Led Zeppelin, their memorization skills were best. When listening to Mozart their memorization skills were second best. When they listened to The Eagles they scored third best. Interestingly, when the subjects did not listen to any background music, their memorization skills were the worst. Conclusions/Discussion My conclusion is that the hard rock music of Led Zeppelin appeared to increase the memorization skills of high school students over other types of music, and no background music at all. I call this conclusion #The Led Zeppelin Effect#.

Competition history

• CSEF 2005 Behavioral Sciences · Entry J0343

Resources

• CSEF project summary ↗

Related projects

Closest projects by meaning, across every fair and year in the corpus.

Browse more like this

• All Behavioural and Social Sciences projects
• CSEF Behavioural and Social Sciences projects
• Every CSEF 2005 project