Music helps me do my homework: a student's conundrum

Past research has demonstrated that music often negatively impacts performance on a variety of cognitive tasks, including tasks relevant to academia. However, there are discrepancies in the literature, including a handful of instances where no effect of music is observed. The present study tests the novel hypothesis that working memory capacity moderates the effect of music on the performance of academic tasks. Undergraduate students worked on reading comprehension and math tasks under both music and silence conditions, before completing a battery of working memory assessments. While music led to a significant decline in performance overall, working memory capacity moderated this effect in the reading comprehension tasks. These findings suggest that individuals who are better able to control their attention (as indexed by working memory performance) may be protected from music-related distraction when studying certain kinds of material.

Grantor dc:publisher

University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

Author dc:creator

• Christopher, Edward A.

Contributors dc:contributor

• Shelton, Jill
• Clark, Amanda J.; Biderman, Michael D.
• College of Arts and Sciences

• Comprehension
• Learning, Psychology of
• Cognition -- Effect of music on
• Reading comprehension -- Effect of music on

Licence

• https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en

Language dc:language

English, eng

Repository record dc:identifier

https://scholar.utc.edu/theses/171

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:scholar.utc.edu:theses-1312