Just like many other students cramming in blogs and wondering what to write about this question came to me quite easily. Is listening music while writing this post helping me or hurting me? I’ve always been told music while you study does not help but it does make it slightly more enjoyable for me. Would a silent room help me retain information while i study or would it hurt, or do nothing? From personal experience I believe certain types of music can help as long as it is playing at a reasonable volume to keep your head clear.
After further investigation on whether it helps or hurts your brain learn the results seem very logical. According to various studies it all depends on your personal capabilities and habits. There is a such thing called the “Mozart Effect”. This is theorized that Mozart’s music helps do mental tasks such as school work and studying. Also studies have shown music that isn’t Mozart can help studying. Music in general can change a person’s emotions, so depending on the type of music this can put you in different states of mind. A certain type of music can help you study and is dependant on the individual. Music with little lyrics and words in it is theorized to help with things such as writing essays or memorization, while music with lyrics can cause confusion in the order you memorize something.
I do believe that it is dependant on the individual and the task on whether music helps or hurts. To extend this study to find more information I think an experiment should be done that has a students memorize something without music, then a similar task with music. This experiment should be randomized between gender and age to find solid evidence. Also, the experiment should include different genres of music to see which is most effective for learning. Reverse causation in this experiment would not apply here, but possibly the music you personally choose to listen to could cause reverse causation, such as the music you listen too is the cause of your study habits. With all those variables controlled this study would have very strong evidence to whether music truly does help, or hurt.
http://thechart.blogs.cnn.com/2010/07/27/music-may-harm-your-studying-study-says/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1281386/
http://www.uloop.com/news/view.php/149570/Do-Or-Dont-Studying-While-Listening-To
I like to listen to music when I do my homework. If I am writing a paper or answering math problems I put music on. However, if I try to listen to music while trying to read a textbook and take notes, I find myself not able to focus. I’m not sure why I can listen to music for one type of homework but not another. The only thing I can think of is that when I listen to music I like to sing, so instead of reading the textbook I go over the lyrics in my head.
As someone who is listening to music right now while commenting, I listen to music very often while doing different tasks. I like the different perspective that you took on the debate and I found your information very interesting and informative. I agree that different types of music work better for different people and that for some people, music is just not beneficial. Depending on what subject I’m working on, different types of music work better for me.
I cannot study with music. It distracts me and always makes me lose my train of thought, especially while reading. This blog reminds me of what we learned in class the other day about multitasking. Can we really listen to music and read something at once? Or is our attention just shifting from one thing to another without us even realizing it? My favorite part about your blog was the experiment you thought of. I think your experiment would prove if music is harmful or helpful when studying! Nice job!
Music has always been a hard topic to depict whether or not it is good for you. I personally study with music- I need white noise in the background to keep me from focusing on conversations around me or small noises. For your experiment you would need quite a large group to study because of all the different types of people, music, and study methods. It has already been shown that classical music is the best music to study with, so you may want to keep that in mind when setting up your study.
This is a great topic of choice that I believe it definitely varies. In my case, I know that if I were listening to music while say typing this comment, I would find myself accidentally typing the lyrics assuming there were some (it has happened to me more than once). So it really just depends on the individual and how good they can focus on more than one thing at a time!
Although I am currently listening to music as I write this blog post, I find it just serves as a distraction from my work. The only time it does not serve as a distraction is when I completely tune the music out. However,expanding on Jordan’s point, I have heard of studies that say if you listen to music when you study and listen to that same music right before a test, it will help you retain the information. That being said, Andrew already explained to us that humans cannot multitask and I do not believe anyone can truly listen to the music and do work at the same time.
I found this blog very interesting. I also believe whether or not music is beneficial to learning is completely dependent on the individual. Just because something works for someone doesn’t mean its going to have the same effect on everyone. If you prefer to have some relaxing music playing in the background while you study then by all means do it, if you find it distracting then study in silence.
I think this point vary from person to person, because my friend love to listen death metal while he was doing the revision, but I found out listen to death metal would only draw my attention to those drum beats instead of focus on study. Of course those perspective can only stand if the study was proved, and it is possible that when study and listen music happen together is consist of multitasking, and we’ve learn from last class that multitasking may decrease your efficiency on doing things, and here’s a link for multitasking.
Personally, I like listening to music while I am studying. It keeps me focused on the task at hand and I believe that when I listen to a certain play list, I can better associate the material I am trying to learn with the music. About an hour before the exam I am about to take, I’ll throw on the playlist I was listening to while studying and it helps me retain the information I was studying!
That is a great idea for an experiment and I think the results would come back with the conclusion that music does help learning. Although I know some people that hate listening to music while they work, I also know a lot of people that can’t focus without it! I know that I am one of those people so I feel this experiment would work perfectly. here is an article that I found that talks about the type of music you should listen to while working to get the most benefits!