Ratings of Musical Hooks in Unfamiliar Pop Music Are Influenced by Repetition and Distraction
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: Popular music’s widespread appeal has often been attributed to its use of ‘hooks’ – musical or lyrical phrases that are salient and easily remembered. This paper reports two experiments examining the role of attention and familiarity in shaping judgements of the salience and memorability of unfamiliar pop music. In Experiment 1, participants listened to unfamiliar pop songs either once or five times, while either attending to the music or completing sudoku puzzles, before using continuous self-report (CSR) to rate the salience and memorability of the full song. The results found that participants more familiar with the song after repeated listening rated it more highly, but that sudoku puzzles were not significantly distracting enough to affect ratings. Experiment 2 largely replicated Experiment 1, except with a verbal task as distraction, and involved providing post-listening ratings of song excerpts. Findings suggest that familiarity led to higher ratings of the excerpts, while attentional distraction led to lower ratings. Collectively, these results indicate that both attention and familiarity contribute to the cognitive processing of hooks in popular music. This research suggests that self-report ratings are an effective tool for psychologically investigating hooks and provide a foundation for future research on how they may influence the experience of earworms.
Source: Psychology of Music
Institution: University of Wollongong
Language: English
Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience
Field: Neuroscience
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $3,650
OpenAlex ID: W7225826278