Imagine yourself in your room, studying physiology, a computer in front of you, with headphones in ear … Do you have a mellow, Beethoven piano symphony or an adrenaline-fueled electronic beat pulsating through you ears? Given the options, which do you feel would lead to a more productive study session?
Studies showed that even when subjects were exposed to their preferred type of music when attempting a study session, results indicated that participants performed worse when listening to some level of auditory stimuli. In contrast, subjects actually performed better when listening to no music. But more importantly, results revealed that music often served as a distracting factor when one was consciously engaged in a cognitively demanding task. Neurocognitive function seemed to actually decrease due to the “distracting” aspect when one was involved in another cognitively demanding task; i.e. fewer mental resources were available to be used for other tasks. Instead, attention seemed to be more drawn to the lyrics and the associated memories and emotions that they evoked—stimulative music seemed to be a strong inhibitor towards cognitive processing mechanisms.
Yet, why do individuals who go the gym for workouts consistently feel that they are able to lift more, run longer, and perform better in physical activity overall when listening to some type of music? After all, physical activity still requires a certain level of coordination and focus, right?
Could the specific type of task needed to be finished be more important than the external stimuli itself? Researchers were curious enough to investigate and they discovered that music influenced workout performance through psychological effects (better mood led to better quality of exercise as perceived by the individuals). More importantly, the results should highlight the importance of deciding when to introduce acoustic stimuli to the brain in order to maximize intended results depending on the type of task at hand.
Dolegui, A. S. (2013). The Impact of Listening to Music on Cognitive Performance. Inquiries Journal, 5(09). http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1657/the-impact-of-listening-to-music-on-cognitive-performance
Jabr, F. (n.d.). Let’s Get Physical: The Psychology of Effective Workout Music. Scientific American. Retrieved November 21, 2020, from https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/psychology-workout-music/
Hi Cris! This is a very interesting concept. I enjoy listening to music, but I cannot concentrate AT ALL while I am studying if there are lyrics, sometimes I can get by with listening to white noise or soundtracks with just instrumentals but it is still distracting. When reading this I thought of my mom who has meneire's disease so she cannot hear out of her left ear. It got me thinking of how some people only put a headphone in one ear while they do their school work. I found a study that showed how our right and left ears pick up different auditory stimuli more effictively than others. The left ear picks up sounds better while the right picks up words more efficiently(Sininger,2012). Maybe if a person was listening to music and only put it in their left ear so that the lyrics were less distracting would they be able to study better? Food for thought and an idea for an interesting followup study!
ReplyDeleteReferences:
Sininger, Y. S., & Bhatara, A. (2012). Laterality of basic auditory perception. Laterality: Asymmetries of Body, Brain and Cognition, 17(2), 129-149. doi:10.1080/1357650x.2010.541464