Does listening to preferred music improve reading comprehension performance?

Perham, Nick; Currie, Harriet Jane

doi:10.1002/acp.2994

Cited by 60 publications

(75 citation statements)

References 40 publications

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“…In Experiment 3, familiar music was found to impair CRAT performance regardless of whether the music induced a positive mood or whether those participants typically studied in the presence of music. Moreover, disruption occurred despite the fact that the music was liked by the participants, which coheres with the findings of Perham and Vizard () and Perham and Currie (), who showed equivalent disruption by liked and disliked background music in the context of serial recall and reading comprehension, respectively.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 87%

Background music stints creativity: Evidence from compound remote associate tasks

Threadgold

Marsh

McLatchie

et al. 2019

Applied Cognitive Psychology

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Background music has been claimed to enhance people's creativity. In three experiments, we investigated the impact of background music on performance of Compound Remote Associate Tasks (CRATs), which are widely thought to tap creativity.Background music with foreign (unfamiliar) lyrics (Experiment 1), instrumental music without lyrics (Experiment 2), and music with familiar lyrics (Experiment 3) all significantly impaired CRAT performance in comparison with quiet background conditions. Furthermore, Experiment 3 demonstrated that background music impaired CRAT performance regardless of whether the music induced a positive mood or whether participants typically studied in the presence of music. The findings challenge the view that background music enhances creativity and are discussed in terms of an auditory distraction account (interference-by-process) and the processing disfluency account.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 87%

Background music stints creativity: Evidence from compound remote associate tasks

Threadgold

Marsh

McLatchie

et al. 2019

Applied Cognitive Psychology

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“…For example, many people listen to music while they read to help them focus or perhaps tune out other sources of distraction. But Perham and Currie (2014) found that even when participants were allowed to choose their own lyrical music, reading comprehension was worse when listening to this music compared with silence or nonlyrical music. Pool, Koolstra, and Van der Voort (2003) found that high-school students who completed homework with soap operas in the background took longer to complete their homework and answered fewer questions correctly.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 95%

Working Memory Capacity Offers Resistance to Mind‐Wandering and External Distraction in a Context‐Specific Manner

Robison

Unsworth

2015

Applied Cognitive Psychology

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The present study examined the impact of mind-wandering and distraction in silent and noisy studying environments and how individual differences in working memory capacity offered resistance to these two distinct forms of attention failure. Two groups of participants read a text in different environments and answered reading comprehension questions. While reading, thought probes asked participants to indicate the current focus of their attention. Results showed that the relationship between working memory capacity and reading comprehension was partially driven by resistance to mind-wandering in the silent condition and by resistance to external distraction in the noise condition. The findings support the distinction between mindwandering and external distraction, two separate yet related types of attention failure that impact task performance. Further, executive abilities seem to offer resistance to these two types of attention failure differentially depending on the context. At any point in time, several sources of information compete for an individual's limited focus of attention. Usually, the individual's goals determine how attention is allocated to these sources. However, irrelevant and distracting sources of information sometimes enter the focus of attention, drawing thoughts away from the individual's goals and negatively impacting task completion. Sometimes, the irrelevant source of information is the individual's own internal thought processes that stray from goal-relevant thoughts. This is typically referred to as mind-wandering. Other times, the individual's attention can be drawn to irrelevant external information (e.g., sights, sounds, and physical sensations), which is typically referred to as external distraction. One setting in which mind-wandering and external distraction can be particularly disruptive is studying-attempting to commit information to memory for later recall. Unsworth, McMillan, Brewer, and Spillers (2012) found that, among college students, two of the most common forms of everyday attention failures were mind-wandering and distraction while studying. Depending on the studying environment, mindwandering and distraction may occur with different frequencies. The present study sought to understand the roles of mind-wandering and distraction in differing studying environments and how the previously mentioned factors work to attenuate task-irrelevant thoughts to maximize performance. More specifically, do mind-wandering and distraction occur in a context-specific manner? Further, do individual differences in executive abilities (e.g., working memory capacity) offer resistance to these two types of attention failure differentially depending on the context? Testing individuals' comprehension of learned material is a frequent method of evaluating ability and proficiency in a variety of settings, especially education. The ability to read, encode, understand, and recall information is thus used as a metric for success in these settings. Therefore, it is important for individuals to effective...

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“…This interference-by-process view can also explain the disruptive effect of meaningful background speech on language-based tasks such as writing (Marsh and Jones, 2010). On this view, the involuntary semantic analysis of background speech disrupts performance by interfering with the execution of the deliberate semantic processes that are carried out to fulfil the task requirements (Jones et al, 2012;Marsh et al, 2008;Marsh et al, 2009;Perham and Currie, 2014). In view of the difference between serial-memory tasks and language-based tasks, a serial short-term memory task was deployed in experiment 1 and a word processed writing task was deployed in experiment 2 of the present study.…”

Section: A Why Sound Disrupts Cognitive Performancementioning

confidence: 99%

“…For example, background speech tends to impair tasks like proofreading (Halin et al, 2013), reading comprehension (Halin et al, 2014;Perham and Currie, 2014), and writing (Keus van de Poll et al, 2014;S€ orqvist et al, 2012) that are presumably representative of the type of task typically undertaken in office environments. Many companies have introduced masking sound in the working environment to combat the potential negative impact of background speech on such cognitive tasks.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Unmasking the effects of masking on performance: The potential of multiple-voice masking in the office environment

Poll

Carlsson

Marsh

et al. 2015

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

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Broadband noise is often used as a masking sound to combat the negative consequences of background speech on performance in open-plan offices. As office workers generally dislike broadband noise, it is important to find alternatives that are more appreciated while being at least not less effective. The purpose of experiment 1 was to compare broadband noise with two alternatives—multiple voices and water waves—in the context of a serial short-term memory task. A single voice impaired memory in comparison with silence, but when the single voice was masked with multiple voices, performance was on level with silence. Experiment 2 explored the benefits of multiple-voice masking in more detail (by comparing one voice, three voices, five voices, and seven voices) in the context of word processed writing (arguably a more office-relevant task). Performance (i.e., writing fluency) increased linearly from worst performance in the one-voice condition to best performance in the seven-voice condition. Psychological mechanisms underpinning these effects are discussed.

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Does listening to preferred music improve reading comprehension performance?

Cited by 60 publications

References 40 publications

Background music stints creativity: Evidence from compound remote associate tasks

Background music stints creativity: Evidence from compound remote associate tasks

Working Memory Capacity Offers Resistance to Mind‐Wandering and External Distraction in a Context‐Specific Manner

Unmasking the effects of masking on performance: The potential of multiple-voice masking in the office environment

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