Involuntary Musical mind-pops
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Musical mind-pops are a subtype of involuntary semantic memories. Instead of having a word or an image coming to mind, we may start unexpectedly humming a song or a tune or hear it replaying in our mind. A real life example from one student is when he started to hum American Anthem during an important exam. Like verbal and image based mind-pops, musical mind-pops are mostly one off occurrences, with the music staying in mind for few seconds and not coming back.
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Repetitive earworms
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Sometimes, however, songs and tunes start to come to mind repeatedly, often against our will and may be unpleasant and even disruptive. Such repetitive musical mind-pops are called 'earworms' - a term that tries to capture the annoying aspect of this experience.
While research on involuntary semantic memories or mind pops is currently conducted only at the University of Hertfordshire, and is still in its infancy, repetitive earworms have fared better and captured both public's and researchers' attention worldwide with growing number of papers being published over the past few years. |
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our research on musical mind-pops
Research at the University of Hertfordshire is primarily focused on ordinary one-off musical mind-pops rather than repetitive earworms per se. We have used a variety of methods including questionnaires, interviews and paper and electronic diaries to collect information about the nature, frequency and triggers of musical mind-pops in everyday life.
Our results show that musical mind-pops are probably a type of involuntary semantic memories that both adults and children are most familiar with. However, only a small percentage of reported musical mind-pops turn into repetitive earworms. This indicates that a clearer distinction should be made in the literature between ordinary musical mind-pops and earworms. Recent results also provide support for Kvavilashvili and Mandler’s (2004) long term priming hypothesis, showing that exposure to music (especially background music) may be essential for subsequent occurrence of musical mind-pops.
Our results show that musical mind-pops are probably a type of involuntary semantic memories that both adults and children are most familiar with. However, only a small percentage of reported musical mind-pops turn into repetitive earworms. This indicates that a clearer distinction should be made in the literature between ordinary musical mind-pops and earworms. Recent results also provide support for Kvavilashvili and Mandler’s (2004) long term priming hypothesis, showing that exposure to music (especially background music) may be essential for subsequent occurrence of musical mind-pops.