Aging and memory for music: A review

People of all ages enjoy listening to music, yet most research inmusical development has concentrated on infancy through childhood. Our recent research program examined various aspects of music cognition in younger (ages 18 through 30) and older adults (ages 60 through 80) with varying amounts of musical experience. The studies investigated the independent and combined influences of age and experience on a wide assortment of long and short-term memory tasks. Results showed that some musical tasks reflect the same age-related declines as seen in nonmusical tasks, and musical training does not reduce these age-related declines. In other tasks, experience differences were larger than age differences; in some cases, age differences were nonexistent. The analysis considers how aging and experience may affect different aspects of cognition, and the paper concludes by pointing out the many musical activities that even nonmusical seniors are well equipped to succeed at and enjoy. Why study age differences in memory for music? If shear neglect of a topic can justify it being studied, then surely our question is answered. The voluminous literature on age differences in memory includes only a handful of studies that use musical materials. Recent reviews of this Ii terature by Anderson and Craik (2000), Balota, Dolan, and Duchek (2000), and Backman, Small, and Wahlin (2001 ) do not mention music, and another review by Zacks, Hasher, & Li (2000) mentions only one relevant study. Similarly, only rarely do music cognition journals carry articles concerning age differences. It is clear that we know little about music cognition in old age. But neglect of the problem is only one reason why it needs to be addressed. Several additional reasons come readily to mind. First, everyday observation suggests that older adults enjoy and participate in musical activities. Musical activities have an overall positive effect among people suffering from dementia (Koger, Chapin, & Brotons, 1999) as well among their healthy peers (Darrough & Boswell, 1992). A survey by Gibbons ( 1982) found that 84% of a sample of 152 healthy elderly people wished to improve their musical skills. MUsiC therapists have published suggestions for music programs with the elderly (Bell, 1987; Clair, 1996; Glassman, 1983; Hintz, 2000). However, the dearth of research makes it difficult for therapists to really understand the musical capabilities of their elderly clients. Among the questions that basic research on music and aging can help answer is whether a person can maintain or even improve her or his skill level if given musical training, and to what extent musical programs for older adults should emphasize exposure to familiar vs. new pieces and styles. second, music may be an ideal domain to study the aging of domainspecific processes compared to the aging of general-purpose operations of learning and memory. For example, researchers currently are interested in changes in short-term, or working memory with age. Not only are investigators studying the nature of age differences in working memory itself, they also are examining whether deficits in working memory processes may underlie age differences in long-term memory, prose comprehension, and other cognitive domains. Yet tests of working memory almost always use verbal or visuospatial stimuli, and, for this reason, the dominant model of working memory (Baddeley, 1986) distinguishes only three basic components: a phonological loop, a visuospatial scratchpad, and a central executive. The familiar experience of having a tune "in our head" suggests the operation of a "melodic loop" (Berz, 1995) that might show age differences and have functional importance for a variety of music-related.activities including learning new tunes, recalling old tunes, and, perhaps most important, simply appreciating music. To examine this loop across the adult lifespan is certainly a task that is well worth our time. …