'Now I know my ABC, next time won’t you sing with me?’: Effects of musical mnemonics on memory performance in healthy adults, ageing, and individuals with cognitive impairment

Episodic and working memory are negatively affected by healthy ageing, and additional memory impairment typically occurs in clinical ageing-related conditions such as amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI). The present thesis investigated whether musical mnemonics affect working and episodic memory performance in cognitively unimpaired individuals and persons with Alzheimer’s dementia (AD). This thesis presents a new theoretical model describing how various important factors (e.g., stimulus complexity, personal aspects) together influence the effectiveness of musical mnemonics on memory performance and a novel paradigm, the musical digit span task, enabling systematic research on effects of musical presentation (and specific contributing aspects of music) on working memory performance. Additionally, this thesis aimed to examine the possible contribution of musical expertise on the degree of benefit of musical mnemonics. The empirical studies in this thesis can be seen as a first step in the research of musical presentation of verbal information to enhance working memory performance in ageing and aMCI. The insights presented in this dissertation contribute to a further understanding of possible aiding mechanisms of musical presentation in the acquisition of new information, not only in ageing without cognitive impairment, but also in cognitively impaired individuals. Directions for future research are provided and implications for designing music-based mnemonics are discussed.