Just Can’t Get You Out of My Head: Associations Between Involuntary Musical Imagery, Singing Accuracy, and Music Perception

Involuntary musical imagery (INMI, or “earworms”) are short, repetitive sections of music that spontaneously occur. Prior research observed significant positive correlations between self-reported music experience and frequency of earworms, and the use of earworms to enhance semantic memory. Previous hypotheses suggest that singing accuracy uses voluntary imagery to help people imitate pitches, and that singing accuracy is positively related to an individual’s music perception abilities. However, we know of no research that has assessed the associations between INMI and non-self-reported musical abilities (specifically looking at singing accuracy and music perception). Participants (N = 152) completed tasks assessing their singing accuracy (the Seattle Singing Accuracy Protocol; SSAP), music perception (the Profile of Music Skills; Mini-PROMS), and a self-report measure of involuntary musical imagery (the Involuntary Musical Imagery Survey; IMIS). Here we show that earworms are associated with both singing accuracy and music perception. These results suggest that musical ability is associated with the quality of auditory imagery experiences, though not necessarily the frequency with which images spontaneously emerge into one’s consciousness.