Kassandra Medrano

Professor Dennis Garza

English 1302-57L

Listening to Music While Studying

MUSLIU, Arian; BERISHA, Blerta; LATIFI, Diellza. The Impact of Music in Memory.

European Journal of Social Science Education and Research, p. 222-227, May 2017.

ISSN 2312-8429,

http://journals.euser.org/files/articles/ejser_may_august_17_nr_2/Arian.pdf. The main

idea of this research experiment was to identify the effects that music has on students on

memory. The theme is that music brings negative effects when it involves memory, so it

is best to avoid listening to music while studying for a test. The methodology states that

this experiment is being tested on students age 17-22. 54% of the students would listen to

music while studying. The instruments would be four different tests involving 50

nonsense syllables on two different tests, 50 different orders of numbers in the third test,

and 12-line poems in the last test. There were 3 different groups: one with lyrical music,

relaxing music, and complete silence. The results showed that listening to music was not

effective to memorize lines. It is shows that music can help in different activities to

increase the mood, but it is not as beneficial during reading or studying. The intended

audience seems to be college students due to the age group that was being experimented

on. This source is useful for my research paper because it demonstrates how music could

cause negative effects in memory. The strength of this source is that there were a series of

tests that were made, there was different groups tested, and the effects is clearly shown.

The author believes that no music would be best for no negative effects to occur.
N’Diaye, Mamoudou. “What Should You Listen to When You Want to Focus?” YouTube,

uploaded by Seeker, 6 June 2018, www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHe6kAZa2NE. This is

the only source that is a video, but I selected it because it provides valuable information.

The main idea of this video is to mention what research has said about music and how it

effects your focus. N’Diaye mentions studies that were conducted to identify what noise

does to our body and prolonged exposure to a noisy environment could lead to cognitive

deficits. Studies had shown that students in schools near airports and train stations have

suffered negative effects on long-term memory and reading comprehension. A study done

in 2013 found that those experiments exposed to silence over Mozart expressed higher

rates of production of neurons in the hippocampus, the part of the brain that processes

memory. N’Diaye mentions more evidence that the brain is processing and evaluating

new information faster in times of silence over sound. This source provides me with more

information about other research studies dealing with the effects music has on our

productivity. It also includes humor while mentioning this information, which is different

to the other sources found. The expertise about the speaker is that he is a writer,

comedian, and researcher with a degree in Neuroscience.

Perham, N., & Currie, H. (2014). Does listening to preferred music improve reading

comprehension performance? Applied Cognitive Psychology, 28(2), 279–284.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/acp.2994?saml_referrer. The reason that

Nick Perham and Harriet Currie made this experiment was because there has been studies

that have proven that music could benefit the performance of an individual because they

listen to their preferred music and they want to find out if that is true with their own

experiment. Their methodology involved the 30 undergraduate students with the age
 range of 19-65 years. The independent variable was the type of sound that was playing

(disliked lyrical music, liked lyrical, nonlyrical, and quiet) and the dependent variable

was the reading comprehension score. The students had to answer SAT questions to

better identify how their reading comprehension performance was affected. A similarity

that this source has compared to the other sources is that it proved how music in general

could have a negative effect on their performance. The difference is that disliked music

and lyrical music was found to be equally damaging to use while performing tasks.

Nonlyrical had less of a negative effect, but Perham said that it is always to work in quiet

conditions. The authors of this study were researchers from Cardiff Metropolitan

University, UK. The reason why this source would be beneficial to use is because I want

to gather facts that involve a series of tests, it would be a good source to include for the

impact music has on productivity and distraction, it contributes to my audience as well,

which is towards college students.

Nass, Clifford, “Multitasking May Not Mean High Productivity.” Talk of the Nation, hosted by

Raeburn, Paul, NPR, 28 Aug. 2009. www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?

storyId=112334449. Dr. Clifford Nass is the Thomas M. Stroke Professor at Stanford

University. Dr. Nass informs that there’s evidence that proves how avoiding multitasking

would result in a better performance. He also talks about the effects of multitasking and

how music is also considered a distraction. You actually gain less productivity when you

try to multitask. One important thing he also mentions is that people that think that they

are good at multitasking are not because it is ineffective and could be harmful at times.

The reason why Dr. Clifford made this study is because he was curious about was the

“trick” for multitasking, but once he did his own experiment, he was able to identify that
 multitasking is not very productive and could lead to less work to be actually done and

understood. This source would be used for my research because multitasking causes

distraction and lack of productivity, which is some issues I want to address because it

relates to listening to music while studying. Compared to the other sources found, this

source is a podcast instead of an article. The strength of this source is that it would be

used to represent that listening to music is considered multitasking and could affect

productivity resulting for a student’s academic performance to be affected as well.

Ransdell, S. E., and L. Gilroy. “The Effects of Background Music on Word Processed Writing.”

Computers in Human Behavior, vol. 17, no. 2, 2001, pp. 141–48. Crossref,

doi:10.1016/s0747-5632(00)00043-1. http://richardcolby.net/writ2000/wp-

content/uploads/2017/10/2001-ransdell.pdf This study was made by researchers S.E.

Ransdell and L. Gilroy to see whether music helped or hindered the students’ ability to

write essays. It was demonstrated that background music significantly disrupted writing

fluency words generate per minute. The similarities it has compared to the other sources

is that it is a research that includes experiments and tests. The difference is that the tests

are identified from a Word document to reveal the word processing fluency and

effectiveness. Some of the methodology included fourty-five participants were

undergraduates, and the experiment included two manipulated subjects such as music

(vocal, instrumental, or both) or a silence. Some dependent variables included writing

fluency, writing quality, average sentence length, and the percentage of long pauses. The

results showed that music significantly slowed word process fluency. It also did not

matter if the music was vocal or instrumental because it still had a disrupted effect. The
 reason why this source is useful for the research paper is because it deals with music and

productivity and the effects it has in memory.

Saarikallio, Suvi, and Jaakko Erkkilä. “The Role of Music in Adolescents’ Mood Regulation.”

Psychology of Music, vol. 35, no. 1, 2007, pp. 88–109. Crossref,

doi:10.1177/0305735607068889.https://www.researchgate.net/publication/229471062_T

he_role_of_music_in_adolescents'_mood_regulation. This source talks about the positive

impacts that music could help in like a person’s mood. It was shown that music was

beneficial for mood regulation. The purpose of this study was to explore the role of music

among teenagers. Saarikallio states that people use music for “good feelings and good

mood”. However, it is demonstrated that music only brings benefits for a person to relax

in their own time. Music is not something that should be used for cognitive improvement

because it would cause inefficiency. The reasons why this source is useful is because it

proves that music has benefits for a person to feel better (not while doing other activities

like studying).