IndexIntroductionMethodParticipantsDesign and ProcedureResultsDiscussionIntroductionStudying is one of the biggest habits and needs among college students. In the study, background noise preferences ranged among students, from quiet sections of the library to uplifting and relaxing music in coffee shops. While some students prefer to work in silence, others need music or some other type of background noise to concentrate. For the vast majority of college students, background noise such as music has become essential to allow cognitive abilities to focus on retaining information or completing informative courses. Technological advances such as iPhones, tablets, and laptops have led to students having easier access to listening to music through the devices' applications. Researchers have generated studies that have examined how listening to music while retaining information can impact short-term memory, which plays a key role in learning ability. Previous and recent studies have examined how short-term memory while listening to music can be affected when trying to remember verbal and written information. However, few studies have tested short-term memory without music and musical conditions paired with visual tasks. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay While some students are able to learn solely by reading words on a screen or sheet of paper, others need some sort of visual representation as they learn. Visual learning is relatively important compared to verbal learning because of the different ranges of ways in which students can retain information while learning. Pictures, graphs, diagrams and maps are all tools that college students and professors now use as an easier way to explain and understand course material. Visually representing material can help students learn to group and organize things together, thus creating greater retention. Chunking is known to be an effective strategy for memory recovery. A study conducted by Norris, Kalm, and Hall (2019), examined subdivision and reinstatement in verbal short-term memory. The study involved six experiments that consisted of word lists that were 7 items long and contained single or double words on a card. Some pairs were unrelated while others were closely related, like grass and seed. They were then instructed to complete a serial recall. The first experiment was conducted exactly as described above, while the second was a short articulatory suppression training session. Experiments four, five, and six were the same as one and two, except that the pairs were split into pairs of three. The study aimed to find out what happens when multiple items in a list form blocks. The results show that encoding words in blocks could allow more words to be stored in memory, freeing up space and ultimately improve memory recall for both blocks and individual words. These findings are relevant because chunking can be used as a strategic aid to memorization. Students are often looking for ways to make their study habits more productive, therefore, the proven results of this study can benefit the homework and test scores of many students whothey learn how to integrate chunking into their lives. According to a study by Calderwood et al. al., (2014), multitasking while studying has become a major distraction among many college students. The participants, who were all students, were engaged in a 3-hour solitary study/homework session. Multitasking was measured by the frequency and duration of distractions and media multitasking. The results indicated that, on average, students spent 73 minutes of the session listening to music while studying. They also indicated that students who spent less time multitasking during the 3-hour duration showed greater homework motivation and self-efficacy to focus on.homework. This study shows how many students choose to incorporate multitasking while completing their work. Today's technological advancements have made it extremely easy for students to access music apps, social media apps, television, and other media that can serve as distractions while studying. It has become an important part of work productivity among students across the United States. While multitasking made studying difficult for students, another study by Atkinson and Shiffrin (1971) examined the importance of short-term memory on the ability to remember. information. Short-term memory governs the flow of selected information through a control process in the memory system. Control processes are used in various scenarios and only in special circumstances. The study uses the term “evidence” to refer to the covert repetition of information. Rehearsal is used when an individual knows that he or she will later have to remember a piece of information. This study shows current relevance as it describes short-term memory as a conscious control selection. When individuals are tested at school or work, this information will need to be passed through the tests to remember later. Furthermore, a study conducted by Lemaire (2019), examined the effect of background music on episodic memory, considering the wide variety of IQ levels rarely considered in other research. In this study, three groups were matched based on gender, age, years of schooling, and musical proficiency. They memorized lists of three words while listening to stimulating or relaxing noises or background music. They found that, compared to background music and soothing noise, stimulating background music made the third list slightly easier to memorize. Going forward with these findings, it is possible that listening to stimulating background music could improve episodic memory. Furthermore, a study conducted by Reaves et al., (2014), examined the effect of background music on visual associative memory. In the study, younger and older adults were instructed to study pairs of face names in silence or while listening to music. Their memory was then tested while they listened to the same or different music and then rated how distracting they found the music to be. Results indicated that all participants found music to be more distracting during the task than silence. However, memory was only impaired by musical conditions in older adults. This research suggests that young adults may have greater memory retention while listening to music and may also indicate why young adults are more likely to focus and concentrate while listening to music and studying than most adults. Furthermore, Nguyen and Grahn (2017) conducted a study that examined the effects of music-induced mood and arousal across different tasksof memory. Music was tested across recall, memory, and associative memory tasks. The experiment tested several memory tasks with mood-induced music, including low- and high-arousal music. Two types of mood-induced music were used: high- and low-arousal instrumental music from the 1990s. A variety of conditions were used, music present only during the study, only in the test, and both in the study and in the test. The results indicated that participants remembered more words when they listened to low-arousal music, but only when the music was bad for recognition memory. Regarding associative memory, neither high nor low arousal music appeared to affect recognition. Comparing music to silence across all conditions, it was found that background music did not significantly improve verbal memory performance. Overall, mood and arousal music influenced recall and recognition, however memory was not improved by background music. Another study by Rowe (1974), examined the ordered recall of sounds and words in short-term memory. The study included two experiments that were compared between sound sequences and 7-item words. Experiment one involved a verbal response to the task. Experiment two involved a nonverbal response to the task. In the experiments, first, the order of sounds was more difficult to remember than words. In experiment two, the results were similar to experiment one, the sound sequences were harder to remember than the words. The results indicate that it is easier to remember words than sounds. Previous research has examined how music affects short-term memory using verbal and auditory memory tasks. However, little research has been conducted on short-term memory visualization tasks paired with music and without music conditions. The goal of this study was to examine whether or not short-term memory would be affected while listening to music compared to not listening to music. To test this, students were asked to perform a visual task after being exposed to a music or no-music condition and to complete a recall test immediately afterwards. After carrying out preliminary research on the effects of music and recall, conflicting results were produced as to whether or not music would improve recall. Not only is this a topic of uncertainty, but it also has real-life importance since music and learning are so closely tied to today's culture. This study hypothesized that between the music group and the no music group, the no music group would have a higher score on the number of correct words remembered. Therefore, it is expected that the presence of music will affect short-term memory. Method Participants This study consisted of 60 participants (36 females, 24 males), all Fresno State students. Their ages ranged from 18 to 25 years, where (M=20.75). Participants were recruited face-to-face in different settings such as on campus, at home, and in other public areas. Prior to the study, students gave consent to participate in the study and were aware that their information would be kept confidential. They were also aware that there was no compensation for participation. Design and Procedure This study was conducted as a true experiment and used a between-subjects research design. There were two conditions, the musical condition and the nonmusical condition. The music used was an excerpt from Beethoven's song “Fur Elise” and was used as.