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Based on our Plasticity Theory of Implicit Music Knowledge Acquisition (PTIMKA), we tested the hypothesis that adolescence is a sensitive period for acquiring musical information and lifelong musical grammar. Older adults (N = 27, mean age = 65.7 years; SD = 6.7) identified artist, title, and year of popularity and rated their familiarity for short excerpts of 36 songs popular between 1962 and 2021. Knowledge and familiarity were greater for music popular during the participants’ adolescence. A subsequent surprise retention task required participants to choose which of 2 excerpts had been presented in the first task; for each of 36 trials, targets and foils represented the same era of popularity. Retention (dê) scores and confidence in retention judgment were higher for the songs popular during adolescence, even though targets of all eras had just been presented in the previous 15 minutes. It is argued that popular music styles congruent with an adolescence-established grammar were more accurately encoded than styles violating this grammar, as would songs popular before or after adolescence. Prior data from younger adults showing trajectories opposite to those for older adults as a function of decade of popularity are further consistent with this interpretation and with PTIMKA. (Work supported by NSERC)
Cohen et al. (Fri,) studied this question.