Chewing gum could remove song stuck in your head

Got a song stuck in your head? Chewing gum may help.
Chewing gum could turn off annoying earworms - catchy tunes that repeat in your head - according to a first of its kind study.
The study from the University of Reading found that people who chewed gum after hearing catchy songs thought less often about the song than in a control condition.
Chewing gum also reduced the amount they 'heard' the song by one third.
Previous research has found that mouthing something to yourself, or even just moving your jaw around, interferes both with short-term memory and imagining sounds.

This study, however, is the first to examine what effect chewing gum has on earworms.

As well as helping those who suffer badly from earworms, the results suggest gum-chewing might help reduce other unwanted or intrusive thoughts - especially ones you 'hear'.
"The earworm phenomenon stretches back at least to the 19th century - Edgar Allan Poe and Mark Twain both referenced the experience in well-known works," said Dr Phil Beaman, from the University's School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences, who led the study.
"The majority of us experience them for only short periods - perhaps just a few minutes - but others can experience them for two or three days which can be extremely frustrating and debilitating.

"We wanted to explore whether a simple act like chewing gum could help," he said.
Ninety-eight volunteers took part in the study. After playing them the catchy tunes Play Hard by David Guetta and Payphone by Maroon 5, researchers asked them to try not to think of the songs they had just heard over the next three minutes but to hit a key each time they did.
"In the chewing gum condition, volunteers reported thinking of and 'hearing' the song less often than in no-activity and finger-tapping control conditions," Beaman said.
Beaman said this type of activity could reduce other intrusive thoughts.

"Interfering with our own 'inner speech' through a more sophisticated version of the gum-chewing approach may work more widely," Beaman said.
"However more research is needed to see whether this will help counter symptoms of obsessive-compulsive and similar disorders," he said.
The study was published in Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology.