Vanessa Sim
Dr. Womack
ENGL 015
March 24, 2014
Listening to Music While Studying
In modern society, music is something that can never disappear because it has become
part of people’s daily life. Waking up by favorite music and until falling asleep by listening to
calm songs, it is not even an exaggeration to say that people coexist with music for 24/7.
According to a survey found by Harris Interactive for staffing company Spheron Corporation, 32
percent of 1,613 U.S. employees said that they listen to music while working, using such
mediums as iPod, MP3 player or similar devices. Also, 79 percent of them said that humming
along improves their job satisfaction or productivity. The effect of music was the highest among
younger workers, with 90 percent of those 18 to 24 and 89 percent of those 30 to 39 saying it
boosted job satisfaction (Hartjesv). In any college library these days, it is very common to see a
number of students plugging earphones in their ears and listening to music while they study.
There are some case of students who plug earphones on their ears to not chat with their friends
and to not to interfere by other people’s noise, but it might also be because students tend to think
that music stabilizes their emotions and that it helps students when they study (Tickell).
Listening to music helps people relax and feel better both physically and mentally. The problem
is whether listening to music while studying really helps or not. To find the answer to this
problem, it is necessary to know why people like music first.
The biggest reason why people like music is music makes people feel better in emotion
and that is because of the repetition of regular sound (Minsky). The sound that people hate, such
as noise, tends to have irregular sound that if people keep listening to it, it could bring out stress
and, in some case, it could bring out reactions to the physical body, such as hearing impairment.
That people like repetition of regular sounds seems to be a physical characteristic. For instance,
babies tend to stop crying and find stability when they listen to their mother’s heartbeat. The
reason why is that babies are used to listening to their mother’s periodic heartbeat sounds since
they were fetus.
Do people really depend on music because they find stability from listening to music?
However, the question is “does it really effect what we do?” In other words, people know that
music helps them feel smooth, but the doubtful point is whether it really helps them effectively
on other stuff that they are working on. As what it says in the previous text, when students listen
to music while studying, it helps them to feel less stress and less anxiety from studying.
However, it cannot be definitely determined that all music helps students focus well and helps
students to do well on tests.
Music can be divided into two broad kinds. There is lyrical music, which people usually
can sing along with, and instrumental music, which is made by only instrumental and acoustic
sounds. When people first listen to singing music, they tend to hum the song. While people hum
the song, they tend to focus on the lyrics. Then, they tend to think about something that relates to
the song lyrics. However, on the other hand, instrumental music, such as classical music, doesn’t
have lyrics to sing. Would this mean that lyrical music impairs students’ productivity on
studying more than the instrumental music?
Researcher Sarah Randell, a psychologist at Florida Atlantic University, in Fort
Lauderdale, told 45 students to write essays with and without lyrical music playing in the
background. The result found out that playing music slowed students down by an average of 60
words per hour than without music playing in the background. She said that “students did not
cope well with the task of listening and writing simultaneously” (Bradbury 1). She also said that
music drops students’ fluency of writing style. However, there was an exception. Students with
some musical training weren’t as badly distracted by music. This is because musically trained
students are more automatically developed in their multi-tasking behaviors with music.
Therefore, as a conclusion, Randell said, "Concentrate when you study. If music helps, keep it
on. If it is distracting, turn it off or down" (Bradbury 2). Randell’s research somewhat made
sense. However, her research seemed to be too broad because it is hard to determine that music
impairs students’ studying with only one type of experiment.
Opposite from what researcher Sarah Randell did on her research, Dr. Nick Perham, a
lecturer in the School of Health Sciences at the University of Wales Institute, Cardiff, only
experimented on students with non-lyrics music with short-term memory test. He told students to
recall the series of numbers, while listening to music that exhibits acoustical variation, which he
calls an “acute changing state sound”, and music that exhibits steady-state sounds with little
acoustical variation. The result found out that students who listened to “changing state sound”
tended to be impaired in recalling a series of numbers while others weren’t impaired nearly as
much (Cutler).
Other researchers in Australia conducted similar research on reading comprehension test
productivity on people with only instrumental music but with four different conditions: slow soft
(110bpm, 60dB), slow loud (110bpm, 72.4dB), fast soft (150bpm, 60dB), and fast loud (150bpm,
72.4dB). Participants’ ages were between 19 and 48, and they all had an average of 3.8 years of
formal music lessons before. The result was people who listened to fast loud music had the
biggest score difference than the score without music and got the lowest grade. Then, people
who listened to slow loud and slow soft got lower average grades than before. However, people
who listened to fast soft music got higher average grades than without music. As a result,
researchers said “listening to background instrumental music is most likely to disrupt reading
comprehension when the music is fast and loud. [However] Music that was slow and/or soft had
no significant detrimental effects on reading comprehension” (Thompson, Schellenberg, &
Letnic, 705). Researchers from Hanover College experimented with a similar reading
comprehension test, but with lyrics music and students who had lyrics music in the background
got significantly lower grades than when they didn’t have the music. They also said that as a
result, “Females had significantly higher scores on the with-lyrics condition than males” (Liapis,
Giddens & Uhlenbrock).
There are a couple things that can be known by what researchers in the previous
experiments have found. Music that has lyrics generally drops students’ study ability
significantly with both reading comprehension tests, where long-term memory skills are needed,
and recalling series tests, where short-term memory skills are needed. However, music that does
not have lyrics, such as instrumental music, tends to not impair students’ study ability much if
the music is soft and calm. Another surprising thing that was found was males are more impaired
by music than females and it can be said that females are more favorable and adaptable to multitasking. If innate factors affect participants, then would personality also affect the participants?
Researchers from University College London, UK Department of Psychology, tested
undergraduate college students on personality and divided students into introverts and extroverts
groups. Then, to each group, they tested on the same reading comprehension test and
memorization test while there was popular lyrical music playing in the background. As a result,
introvert students’ test scores were noticeably lower when there was music played than extrovert
students’ scores. The reason why was that extrovert students had more experience with listening
to music while they study. Thus, researchers said that if introverts keep listening to music and get
used to it, then it could be changeable. However, they present about the result, “Yet
the…hypothesis would still maintain that the morale/satisfaction of the introverts would be lower
than that of the extraverts even though their performance were not different” (Furnham, Bradley,
453). Therefore, it can be said that personality-wise, habits are not easy to change and that it can
be determined that personality could be a similar case as innate factors.
Many researchers have said that music that contains lyrics tend to disturb students’ study
productivity more than the music that does not have lyrics. Would this be the case only because
the words focus people’s thought? The study found that people’s brains separate music and lyrics
when listening to music (Hamzelou). Therefore, when a person is listening to music, even though
the brain first processes the music and the lyrics as one signal, later on it will process into
different parts of the brain. Because the brain’s part where it processes and stores lyrics uses the
same part when people are using a language, students tend to be more disturbed by lyrical music.
Consequently, this is why lyrical music decreases students’ memory (Liapis, Giddens, and
Uhlenbrock).
Most students have thought that when they listen to music while studying, it helps them
to concentrate well and they are less disturbed by the noise from outside, so it will develop
students’ study productivity. However, numerous researchers have found that music actually
decreases students’ study productivity. Music makes people happier when they are already in a
positive mood, and it makes them sadder when they are already in a negative mood. Life without
music will be like eating tasteless cooking. Like special taste of food stimulates people’s
appetite, because music exists, people’s naïve life is full of interests. However, like unhealthy
food can be made due to too much focus on the good taste, music is also beneficial if people
enjoy it in moderation. Therefore, when students are trying to do well on the important exams, it
is better for them to turn off the music for a while or listen to a soft and calm, non-lyrical music
that less disturbs students’ concentration.
Works Cited
Bradbury, Andrew. “If Music Feeds the Mind, Play On.” New Scientist 17 March 2001, 17.
LexisNexis Academic. Web. 21 March 2014.
Cutler, David. “Don’t Listen to Music While Studying.” Edutopia. The George Lucas
Educational Foundation. 4 Dec 2013. Web. 21 March 2014.
Furnham, Adrian and Bradley, Anna. “Music While You Work: The Differential Distraction of
Background Music on the Cognitive Test Performance of Introverts and Extraverts”.
Applied Cognitive Psychology, 11, (1997) 445-455. EBSCOhost. Web. 23 March
2014.
Hamzelou, Jessica, “Music and Lyrics: How the Brain Splits Songs.” NewScientist Life. 9 March
2010. Web. 21 March 21, 2014.
Hartjesv, Elona. “Listening to Music Helps Students Be More Productive in the
Classroom." Teachers At Risk. WordPress. 23 September 2006.Web.24 March. 2014.
Liapis, Zach, Giddens, Zach and Uhlenbrock, Michelle. “Effects of Lyrical Music on Reading
Comprehension.” Hanover College (2008). Web. 23 March 2014.
Thompson, William Forde, Schellenberg, E. Glenn, and Letnic, Adriana Katharine. “Fast and
Loud Background Music Disrupts Reading Comprehension.” Psychology of Music 40.6
(2011): 700-08. Sage Journals. Web. 23 March 2014.
Tickell, Sofia Castello y. “Should you Listen to Music while Study?” USA Today College. USA
Today. 10 September 2012. Web. 24 March 2014.