Is it OK to listen to music while studying?

Why Listen To Classical Music While Studying?

As students in NSW begin their HSC written exams, a UOW researcher provides an answer to this challenging query.

It’s a wise inquiry! In other words, music improves our mood, which helps us study better, but it also distracts us, which hinders our learning.

Therefore, if you want to use music to study well, you should lessen how distracting it might be and raise how much it makes you feel happy.

Learn more: Why do adults think video games are dangerous for kids?

Music can put us in a better mood

Why Listen To Classical Music While Studying

The Mozart effect, or the notion that listening to Mozart makes you “smarter,” may be something you’ve heard about. This is based on studies that showed that listening to difficult classical music, such as Mozart, increased test scores. According to the researcher, this is because the music can stimulate the areas of our brains that are involved in mathematical skills.

The Mozart effect theory was definitively refuted by more study, which revealed that music just improves our mood and had nothing to do with math.

There was a “Blur Effect” in the 1990s, where children who listened to the BritPop band Blur performed higher on tests. Because youngsters prefer pop music like Blur over classical music, researchers discovered that the Blur effect was greater than the Mozart effect.

Being happier probably causes us to work a little bit harder and to be more inclined to persevere through difficult tasks.

Music can distract us

On the other hand, depending on the situation, music might be a distraction.

When you study, you’re using what’s known as “working memory,” which allows you to keep and manage multiple pieces of knowledge simultaneously in your head.

The evidence suggests that while music is playing in the background, particularly vocal music, our working memory suffers.

Reading comprehension suffers when people listen to music with lyrics, perhaps as a result. Additionally, introverts seem to find music more distracting than extroverts do, maybe because introverts are more susceptible to overstimulation.

Researchers from Australia named Bill Thompson and his colleagues did some ingenious work to determine the relative impact of these two competing components, mood and distraction.

Participants were given a rather difficult comprehension assignment to complete while listening to either slow or quick, soft or loud, classical music.

When people were listening to music that was both loud and quick, they discovered that the only time there was any actual decline in performance (that is, at about the speed of Shake It Off by Taylor Swift, at about the volume of a vacuum cleaner).

However, even though that reduced performance, the decline wasn’t particularly significant. Furthermore, other studies that looked in a similar direction also came up empty.

So… can I listen to music while studying or not?

In conclusion, research indicates that, with a few exceptions, listening to music while studying is probably ok.

It is preferable if:

It improves your mood.

It isn’t too loud or too quick.

It’s less verbose (and hip-hop, where the words are rapped rather than sung, is likely to be even more distracting)

You’re not an overly shy person.

Enjoy the music and best of luck on your exams!

Learn more: Why do older people detest new music.

Hello, enquiring young people! Do you have a query you’d want an authority to address? Send your inquiry to curiouskids@theconversation.edu.au with the assistance of an adult.

Timothy Byron, a psychology lecturer at the University of Wollongong

A Creative Commons license has been used to republish this article from The Conversation. Check out the original article.

By offering knowledgeable remark, opinion, and analysis on a variety of contemporary social issues and current affairs, UOW scholars engage in academic freedom. These academics’ own opinions are reflected in this expert commentary, which does not necessarily represent the opinions or stances of the University of Wollongong.

It will help you focus more

According to a Stanford research, music “moves [the] brain to pay attention,” not distract college students. Music “engages the parts of the brain associated in paying attention, making predictions, and updating the event in memory,” according to research using musical works from the 1800s (Baker). The researchers assert that “the goal of the study was to look at how the brain sorts out events, but the research also revealed that musical techniques used by composers 200 years ago help the brain organize incoming information.” They believe that music preference had an impact on brain processing (Baker). Students can organize material with the aid of Mozart, Bach, and Beethoven, which is a useful skill for learning.