The Impact of Listening to Music on Cognitive Performance

The Impact of Listening to Music on Cognitive Performance

Many students listen to music to alleviate the emotional effects of stress and anxiety when engaged in complex cognitive processing, such as studying for a test, completing homework assignments, or while reading and writing. This practice is so common that it would be beneficial for college students to understand the role that music plays on cognitive performance. Research demonstrating the effects of music on performance is well documented, but have shown ambiguous evidence on this matter. In studies conducted to learn about the effects of musical distraction on cognitive task performance, the findings have demonstrated the idea of music improving cognitive performance (Cockerton, Moore, & Norman, 1997), but there has also been research contradicting those results, where music was found distracting for participants performing cognitive tasks (Furnham & Bradley, 1997). However, with the plethora of music genres available to music listeners, it is important to understand how different types of music impact performance. Additionally, very few studies address the interaction between the intensity or volume of the music played and its effect on cognitive processing. The present study aims to understand the effect of listening to different genres of music played at different volume levels on cognitive task performance.

Many students choose to listen to a preferred genre of music when they study or do their homework without understanding the potential harmful effects of such practice. A study conducted by Smith and Morris (1977) addressed this question by studying the effects of sedative and stimulative music. The study focused on the influence these two distinct genres of music have on performance, anxiety, and concentration. Participants had to indicate their preferred genre and were requested to repeat a set of numbers backwards while listening to either the stimulative, sedative, or no music. The results indicated that participants performed worse while listening to their preferred type of music. Additionally, in the no music condition, participants performed best. These results indicate that a preferred type of music can serve as a distracting factor when one is engaged in a cognitively demanding task perhaps due to the fact that less cognitive resources are available when the attention is drawn to the lyrics, emotions, and memories that such music can evoke. Participants who listened to sedative music performed better than participants who listened to simulative music and worse than those who listened to no music at all. These results indicated that stimulative music is a stronger distractor and obstructs cognitive processing more than sedative music does.