Music: Is it a Distraction or Does it Improve Action?
It is heavily debated whether music improves or takes over your focus (Photo: Penn State).
Imagine you are in class. We will say math class. You are doing independent work and you feel like you just cannot focus. Would putting in headphones and listening to music help you, or keep distracting you?
It is heavily debated whether music improves or takes over your focus. It is really much harder to tell and much more complicated than you may think. Some studies have found music sidetracks you while others say it can help you engage in your task. Some people say music helps them focus while others say music makes it harder for them to concentrate. This story will dive deeper into these claims through interviews, studies, facts, and more.
In the article, "Why You Shouldn’t Listen to Music While Studying", Open Colleges talks about a study conducted by the University of Wales Institute in Cardiff that examines whether listening to music truly helps students or not. The evidence from this study suggests the latter.
For the experiment, researchers gathered 25 people ages 18 through 30 and had them memorize and recite a list of letters in a particular order. The participants had different circumstances in which they had to do this: silence, listening to music they liked, listening to music they didn’t like, a voice repeating the number “3”, and a voice relaying random one-digit numbers.
The participants had different circumstances in which they had to complete a task (Photo: Freerange).
The results of the study concluded that the participants tended to do worse when listening to any type of music, whether they liked the tune or not. They also typically performed badly when listening to the person saying random numbers. Silence and the voice repeating 3 were the most beneficial conditions.
But why? How come some of the speech made participants perform badly (music and random numbers) but the other speech (repeating number “3”) made participants perform well? Open Colleges explains this as something called the irrelevant sound effect. The irrelevant sound effect theory says that the brain gets distracted not by sound itself, but by the changing of sounds, like moving notes, volumes, lyrics, etc. This explains why the repeating 3 wasn’t distracting. Yes it was noise, but it was constant, so it was not much of a distraction to the listener’s mind.
But there are also pros to listening to music while you do work. National University’s article, "Does Music Help You Study and Focus" tells us some of these advantages. The big ones that came up again and again were improving memory and reducing stress. The article explains this by telling us that your memory is increased when listening to music because music engages both hemispheres of your brain, and listening to music puts you in a good mood which decreases stress.
Though, in this article, it is pointed out that whether you listen to music while working or studying should be determined by your task, the type of music you’re listening to, the volume of your music, and how you learn. It is kind of different for everyone.
National University also reports that instrumental music is more beneficial (probably due to the irrelevant sound effect), but in the end, the author concludes, “For the most benefits, listen to music you enjoy, and that makes you feel good. A study suggests memory is improved by the mood boost from listening, not the background music itself” (National University).
Teachers have the opportunity to enhance student’s well-being with the many benefits listening to music can offer, so why is it not allowed in class? The continuing poor connotation of listening to music during school work has been researched dozens of times, one article regarding the topic is, "Music Listening for Students Well-Being" written by Dr. Giuliana Conti and Amy Sloan, published by the National Association for Music Education (NAfME).
Well-being is not just the attempt to avoid misery but instead the ability to flourish, have a sense of purpose, and even experience fulfillment. This can be easily recognized with the acronym “PERMA.” This stands for positive emotions, engagement, relationships, meaning, and achievement. Many teachers use PERMA to determine where students need help within their school life.
Well-being can be improved just by a teacher integrating music into their classroom. The music genre does not matter but instead how the student relates to the music directly.
We asked a series of questions regarding music listening habits. Our first question was, ‘Do you listen to music often outside of school?’ Two students responded to this question. Freshman boy Sam Crist said, “Yes.” Senior Lily Fisher told us, “Yes! I listen to it in my car and at home a lot.”
Our next question was, ‘Do you listen to music while doing homework?’ Once again, Sam gives a simple response, “No.”
Lily gives us more insight of how she does homework, “It depends what homework I’m doing. When I’m reading I don’t but if I’m doing something else then I do.”
In our next question, we chose to ask, ‘Do you think listening to music helps you focus or do you think it distracts you?’ With this, Sam told us, “It helps me most of the time.”
Lily said, “I think it’s more distracting but it is super fun!” Believe it or not but both of these answers are equally correct. Listening to music can have completely different effects on the listener.
As these students are already interested in music and its benefits, we have the chance to look at the facts about how our brains process music while studying or doing work.
Some people just can’t focus while listening to music while others can’t focus without it. In the article, "Network Science and the Effects of Music Preference on Functional Brain Connectivity: From Beethoven to Eminem" by P.L, D.H, and J.B, paragraphs upon paragraphs can be found all about how the brain processes music.
In this study, participants were placed in an MRI while music was played for them. As they listened to the music, they looked at the brain's reactions. It was concluded that everyone's brains are different and memorization and brain performance enhancing abilities are dependent on the person alone. Though, oftentimes, the participants' favorite song helped.
Not only did we interview students to get an insight, we also talked to some teachers. We interviewed Ms. Hunt and Mr. Lowery.
Our first question was, ‘Do you listen to music often outside of school?’ Both teachers confirmed that they do like to listen to music at home.
Our second question for the teachers was, ‘Do you listen to music while doing work at home?’ Mr. Lowery told us that he does. Ms. Hunt explained, “At home yes, but not at school.”
Our third and final question was arguably the biggest, ‘Do you let students listen to music while they work? Why or why not?’ Mr. Lowery told us, “If we’re doing some small writing like journaling they can because it helps the focus but if it’s a big writing like a summative writing then no.”
Ms. Hunt said, “Yes because it helps them focus when they can tune out distractions around them.”
After all the research, we found the answer as to why it’s so hard to figure out whether listening to music is good for your focus, and if you should listen to music while working. The answer to both those questions is that it truly just depends on the person. For some people, music can help them tune out distractions. They can listen to music without getting distracted while music covertly calms them and increases their memory. For other people, music is too distracting and will make them work inefficiently. It all depends on you.