Valerie Angel Tapia(she/her/hers)

In light of the Coronavirus-19 Pandemic inflicting the world, college students in the United State of America are concerned about their health, the state of the economy, and dramatic lifestyle shifts, and they are experiencing an increased level of stress (Copeland et al., 2020). Stress takes a toll on our cognitive function, which can negatively impact our abilities to store information. Studies have shown that both music and the practice of mindfulness meditation strengthens brain function, which helps to enhance memory (Ferreri et al., 2013; Roozendaal et al., 2009). The current experimental study aimed to provide insight to pinpoint the benefits of how a single meditation along with music could improve memory recall, and their ability to aid one’s cognitive abilities to remember words that are attempted to be stored in memory semantically. Participants were majority female 84.7%, Hispanic or LaxinX 42.4%, between the ages of 18 and 25 83.9%, and at or below poverty level 61.1%. It was expected that participants who listened to background music during encoding and recall as well as engaged in a mindfulness meditation would remember the most words. There were no significant differences in memory recall when participants practiced mindfulness meditations or listened to music F(3)=1.47, P>.05. Additional data collection, or a larger and more generalizable sample, would be necessary to increase the power of this study. This should not discount the individual benefits that both mindfulness meditations and music have independently shown in the past.

Keywords. mindfulness, meditation, memory, recall, music, semantic memory, relaxation, body relaxation, body scans, mindfulness meditation