What makes background music distracting? Investigating the role of song lyrics using self-paced reading

Abstract

It has been suggested that listening to music during reading may be distracting, but the empirical results have remained inconclusive. One limitation of previous studies is that they have often had limited control over the number of lyrics present in the songs. We report 4 experiments that investigated whether song lyrics make music distracting. Participants read short paragraphs in a self-paced reading paradigm in three sound conditions: 1) silence; 2) lyrical songs at ~150 words per minute; and 3) the instrumental version of the same songs.The results showed that listening to instrumental music either did not affect reading times or led to slightly faster reading times compared to silence. However, lyrical music led to an increase in reading times in three experiments. We conclude that instrumental music does not lead to distraction during reading. Song lyrics appear to be distracting, even if the observed distraction is quite mild.

Memorable Music and Cognitive Development in Emerging Adulthood: A Scientific Perspective

“…In addition, familiar music has been associated with increased enjoyment and performance on cognitive tasks (Du et al, 2020;Su et al, 2023). However, music can also interfere with reading comprehension, especially when the music has lyrics or when readers encounter difficult vocabulary (Vasilev et al, 2023) Overall, although music can improve cognitive performance in various ways, the effects may vary based on factors such as the type of music and individual differences in musical knowledge and training (Du et al, 2020;Su et al, 2023).…”