Date of Award

5-1-2003

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

First Advisor

Dr. John Noble

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between learning and retrieving movement with and without musical cues. Twenty-three students all of whom had not had any formal dance training participated in this study. The subjects were required to make two visits for data collection purposes. Testing included performance of the “Mayim” folk dance on day one and then again on day two. Subjects in groups one and two learned the dance with music and subjects in groups two and three learned the dance to the beat of the metronome. On their second visit, groups one and three performed the dance with the music while groups two and four performed the dance with the metronome. It was hypothesized that the subjects who learned the folk dance with the music would be able to perform the folk dance better than the subjects who learned the folk dance without the music and that the recall performance of the folk dance would be greater by the subjects who had the music as their cue rather than by the subjects who only had the metronome as their cue. However, the results indicated that learning the folk dance with and without the music did not produce any significant performance differences. Yet there were significant differences found between the movement performance scores on day one and day two (F=4.004, p<.05). The groups’ total movement scores for days one and two went from a mean of 95.3 down to a mean of 78.8. Although no significant differences were found between the groups on day 2, three out of the four groups showed a decrease in retention performance. The results of this investigation did not provide enough evidence to support the theory that music does enhance one’s ability to recall movement with the aid of musical cues.

Comments

A Thesis Presented to the School of Health, Physical Education, and Recreation and the Faculty of the Graduate College University of Nebraska In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Science in HPER University of Nebraska at Omaha. Copyright 2003, Lora S. Maher

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