Studying while listening to music has become a common thing within the last 10 years due to the popularity of iPods, mp3 players, and other medias of music. I’ve always wondered though, is the music helping us at all or is it just hindering us? When I was looking up studies for this I was listening to Dead Flowers by The Rolling Stones, but when I found this interesting study, I turned off my music.
The study was conducted with 25 participants who were students at a university in England between ages 18 and 30. There was five sound environments being tested in this experiment. Silence, changing-state speech, steady-state speech, liked music, and disliked music. The silence is self explanatory. The changing state-speech is a random set of numbers being played into the earphones of the participants. This random number oration is supposed to simulate somebody talking near or around you. The steady-state speech part is the participant hearing the word ‘three’ over and over again for the entire duration. This is supposed to simulate a constant noise like an air condition or constant traffic going by if you were near a highway. The liked music was not a constant. Each participant got to choose their own song that was long enough to be played for the duration of the trial. The dislike music was actually a constant however. Before the trial began, each volunteer was asked, among other things, whether or not they like the song “Thrashers” by Death Angel, each person that said they did like it was disqualified. So every participant did not like the song. Each noise segment had 5 lists of 8 consonant letters in random order. The participants were shown each list and then were asked to recall the order in which the letters in the list were presented. This was repeated four more times for each noise segment. The participants then rated each noise segment on a scale of pleasurableness.
The results of the trial were somewhat surprising. Quietness showed the best recall performance with a close second to steady-state speech. The like music, disliked music, and changing-state speech segment all showed about the same level of impairment. This experiment could have gone many other different ways to give us a better answer. They could have experimented with instrumental music like Mozart or something like that. They could have tried to see if volume made a difference by having some participants listen to louder or quite versions of the noise segments. They could have tried having the participants just listen to music while they are first being shown the lists to memorize, then shut off the music when it is time to recall the lists. That is more realistic because students are not allowed to listen to music during a test. They could have broken it up into more age groups if they had more people to see if younger people actually do study better than older people with music. This could have skewed the data some because the age of the participants ranges from 18 to 30. There is a big difference between the mind of an 18 year old and the mind of a 30 year old.
All in all the experiment could have been done a lot better. It is more of an anecdote because there is only 25 people in the survey versus the millions of people that study at college. The study could suffer from the Texas Sharpshooter problem in order to avoid being a part of the File Drawer problem. If the study finds something contrary to what people might assume like listening to music you like actually doesn’t help with studying, then it will not be ignored. So this study is unreliable to make any concrete conclusions. I did find however that I am able to concentrate better when I am not listening to music. Before studying though, it does help me to get in a good mood before I start, but I focus better without any noise.
I find that using certain music types help me study better. If I have to study by reading a lot of pages in a book, playing music with vocals in it distracts me. My mind can’t focus on understanding the book and also pay attention to the music. The vocals also make it so the music will make me want to listen to what the artist is saying. Music like Jazz and Classical are easier to study with, because the constant instrumental allows me to listen without devoting too much concentration to it.
Music has always found ways to evoke a certain mood in me. However, I have yet to find a music genre in which makes me focused for academic work. As humans, I think it is (study backs me up) that we are not able to multitask well. Given that music is a task, there is no way that music can be advantageous to your studies. Had the work be redundant work, yes. However, since music evoke a mental response in the brain, I do not believe it will take studying as well as it can. This is what I thought. Through some research, I found this article This article states how it depends on the person. As I read it, I understood more as to why music could be a tool in studying. However, as for my personal experience and common logic (which can be flawed) music has no place with studying. As for your blog, I think it is wonderfully written. I like how you mentioned how small the study sample size was and how the study could suffer from Texas sharpshooter and explained how you would have altered the trials.
I enjoyed reading your post because I agree that listening to music while studying is a common habit of students these days. For myself, I actually prefer listening to music when I am doing math-related problems or tedious work. However, I absolutely can not focus when music is played while attempting to read, write a paper, or study for a test. Here’s a link to why silence is important when trying to do one of these tasks.
Daniel, you did a fantastic job connecting what we learn in class to the topic of your blog. Great job! I find this topic to be very interesting due to the fact that I truly believe a little Jack Johnson traveling through my headphones while doing homework helps me to concentrate and be as productive as possible, despite some studies that say otherwise. Similarly, I often find myself facing severe insomnia and therefore have searched for many ways to relax my mind in an attempt to catch some Z’s. This problem has led me to experiment with listening to calming music upon bedtime. Does listening to music actually help you fall asleep? An article from the website Today tells us that, “People should look for songs that have 60 beats per minute (BPM) or less if they want to relax”. Also, the writers advise us to choose music that we associate with a happy memory as that can have beneficial effects on your level of relaxation. The Pittsburgh Symphony has an article on a meta-analysis of research studies about this problem that was published in the International Journal of Nursing Studies. “In each study, participants were randomly assigned to a treatment condition, in which they passively listened to music, or an alternative condition. Researchers then measured the sleep quality of all participants.” Overall, the findings show that music significantly improves quality of sleep. All of the studies were randomized control trials, yet some had relatively small sample sizes, making it more difficult to trust the results. To conclude, a correlation is often shown between slow, particularly classical music and an improved quality of sleep. Look at all the wonderful things music can do!
Daniel, you did a fantastic job connecting what we learn in class to the topic of your blog. Great job! I find this topic to be very interesting due to the fact that I truly believe a little Jack Johnson traveling through my headphones while doing homework helps me to concentrate and be as productive as possible, despite some studies that say otherwise. Similarly, I often find myself facing severe insomnia and therefore have searched for many ways to relax my mind in an attempt to catch some Z’s. This problem has led me to experiment with listening to calming music upon bedtime. Does listening to music actually help you fall asleep? An article from the website Today tells us that, “People should look for songs that have 60 beats per minute (BPM) or less if they want to relax”. Also, the writers advise us to choose music that we associate with a happy memory as that can have beneficial effects on your level of relaxation. The Pittsburgh Symphony has an article on a meta-analysis of research studies about this problem that was published in the International Journal of Nursing Studies. “In each study, participants were randomly assigned to a treatment condition, in which they passively listened to music, or an alternative condition. Researchers then measured the sleep quality of all participants.” Overall, the findings show that music significantly improves quality of sleep. All of the studies were randomized control trials, yet some had relatively small sample sizes, making it more difficult to trust the results. To conclude, a correlation is often shown between slow, particularly classical music and an improved quality of sleep. Look at all the wonderful things music can do!
People should look for songs that have 60 beats per minute (BPM) or less if they want to relax,
I liked your article, and it definitely hold so much truth as me and my roommates both listen to music when we study. In high school, my statistics teacher used to play classical music because he said it helps us learn better. It has been scientifically proven that it works and here’s a link if you want to know more:
http://www.rocketmemory.com/articles/music-and-studying/
As a college student this is definitely a topic that follows us around and is prominent in our lives. I constantly have to battle whether or not I should listen to music while I do work and study. I ultimately truly think it depends on the individual and how they react to background noises. I believe the study failed to actually capture an atmosphere that is similar to a student doing work and studying in his/her comfortable environment. Some students prefer doing their work in their dorm while others prefer the library or a cafe. I think the locations of where students go is equally as important as the background noise following. I believe that even the repetition or constant stream of numbers is unrealistic towards what background and constant noise actually is. There are many flaws in this study and the lack of people make it less reliable to know whether or not the poorly conducted tests are actually a result of the background noises. Sofia Tickell, from USA Today commented on listening to music while studying and said that: ” Music has a profound impact on our state of being, altering everything from mood to heart rate. It can energize or depress us. Medium levels of arousal are ideal for studying — not too agitated and not too relaxed — and music can also be an effective tool in leading students to that level.” http://college.usatoday.com/2012/09/10/should-you-listen-to-music-while-you-study/ She mainly connects mood to studying and since music alters mood it is said that it just depends on what music personally sets your brain into the mood of focusing and wanting to accomplish getting work done. Following that article, even professor Nass of Stanford University stated that “Music with lyrics is very likely to have a problematic effect when you’re writing or reading. Probably less of an effect on math, if you’re not using the language parts of your brain.” Ultimately, more research needs to be conducted but as of now it seems that music is very subjective and what music works for some people to listen to while working doesn’t for others and until there is more definite research, self experimenting with what music works best for you is necessary.