By Timothy Byron, University of Wollongong
To sum up, we could say that music improves our mood, which allows us to study better, but it can also distract us, which prevents us from working well.
Therefore, if you want to study effectively with music, you should reduce the distracting effect of music and enjoy our good mood.
Music can make us feel better
You may have heard of the Mozart effect, the idea that listening to Mozart makes you “smarter”. This idea is based on research who showed that listening to complex classical music, such as that of Mozart, improved the results of certain tests. According to the researcher, this theory is based on the ability of music to stimulate the parts of our brain that play a role in mathematical abilities.
However, further research disproved the Mozart effect theory: it didn’t really have anything to do with the math, but the scientists showed that the better results were due to us being in a better mood. thanks to music.
Researches conducted in the 1990s found evidence of a “Blur effect”: children who listened to BritPop group Blur seemed to score higher on tests. In fact, the researchers found that the Blur effect was greater than the Mozart effect, simply because children enjoyed pop music like Blur more than classical music.
Being in a better mood probably means we’re trying a little harder and ready to tackle the tough stuff.
Music can distract us
On the other hand, music can be a distraction in certain circumstances.
When you study, you use your “working memory”, that is, you store and manipulate several pieces of information at once in your head.
Research clearly shows that when there is music playing in the background, and especially music with vocals, our working memory deteriorates. This will result in poorer reading comprehension, for example.
An Australian researcher, Bill Thompson, and his colleagues have made a work very interesting to determine the relative effect of these two competing factors: mood and distraction.
They asked participants to perform a fairly demanding comprehension task and to listen to classical music, either slow, fast, soft or loud.
They found that the only time performance actually decreased was when people listened to music that was both fast and loud (i.e. at the speed of shake it off of Taylor Swift, to a volume equivalent to that of a vacuum cleaner).
Even though this caused a drop in performance, the drop was not that significant. others similar searches did not show any major differences either.
So, should you listen to music while working?
Bottom line: Studies suggest there’s probably no harm in listening to music while you’re studying, subject to a few conditions.
It’s better if:
she puts you in a good mood
She’s neither too fast nor too strong
it’s not too “verbose” (hip-hop, where the lyrics are rapped rather than sung, would be even more entertaining)
If you too have a question, ask your parents to send an email to: [email protected]. We will find a scientist to answer you.
Timothy ByronLecturer in Psychology, University of Wollongong
This article is republished from The Conversation under Creative Commons license. Read theoriginal article.