The Effect of Poor Sleep Quality on Recall and Working Memory Mediated by Music among Young Indian Adults

Objective: In the present study, the effect of poor sleep on the recall and working memory capacity mediated by music (instrumental or vocal) of young Indian adults was assessed. The age ranged from18 to 23 (N=60). There were 15 participants in each group.  The 4 groups included- good sleep quality with music, good sleep quality without music, poor sleep with music and good sleep without music. Method: Each participant filled a Google form that comprised of questions from Pittsburg Sleep Quality Index (Buysse, 1980) to measure the sleep quality and participants were qualified into poor sleep quality and good sleep quality. The responses were collected and scored. PANAS was used as a tool to control for the effect of mood. The participants were presented with a recall task (Toronto Word Pool List) and working memory task (n-back) for the pre-test and the post-test conditions using the PEBL software. A control task of change detection which assesses attention was used as a control task.  The group without music was provided with news recording. Data was analyzed for descriptive as well as for significant differences between means between the poor sleep and the good sleep quality with and without music. Results: No significant differences were found among the four groups of comparison. This can be due to the factor of mood, the role of mood might have been dominant in the performance of individuals in the three tasks given. The choice of music also can be an important factor in determining the positive impact of music on the performance of the individuals on the three tasks provided.  Implications: The role of music not mediating the factor of sleep is an important finding. Music is considered an important intervention for a specific number of disorders but music might not be considered a useful tool for enhancing sleep quality. The need for interventions that enhance sleep quality can be understood in terms of the findings of this research and how improving sleep can improve memory of young adults.