An Empirical Study on Passive Music Listening Experiences in Childhood and Episodic Memory

This study aimed to preliminarily validate the "Parent's Car Theory"—a colloquially discussedphenomenon suggesting that music heard in parents' cars during childhood influences latermusical preferences. A small-scale web-based questionnaire survey was conducted with 57participants, analyzing their musical backgrounds, childhood listening experiences, and currentpreferences from multiple perspectives. The results suggested that 64.9% of respondentspositively evaluated this theory. Furthermore, detailed analysis indicated that the followingfactors may contribute to the theory's validity: (1) high frequency of exposure (mere-exposureeffect), (2) positive emotions toward music and selectors (classical conditioning), (3) theuniqueness of the car interior as a listening environment (context-dependent memory), and (4)the relationship between past music genres and current preferences (schema theory). Thisstudy suggests that the "Parent's Car Theory" may be a highly probable phenomenonestablished through multiple psychological mechanisms, and could potentially be positioned asa concrete example of "cascading reminiscence bumps," which demonstrate the transmissionof musical culture from parent to child generations.