DOES MUSIC AFFECT CONCENTRATION LEVELS AND MENTAL PERFORMANCE?

Transcription

1 DOES MUSIC AFFECT CONCENTRATION LEVELS AND MENTAL PERFORMANCE? BY LOLA RIGG Improving health worldwide

2 BACKGROUND OF HYPOTHESIS GOOD MUSIC FOR CONCENTRATION Synthetic, instrumental or natural sounds with no human speech (lyrics) Ambient house Instrumental film scores Instrumental hip hop Video game soundtracks Ambient trance BAD MUSIC FOR CONCENTRATION Genres that have clear vocals are bad for maintaining high concentration levels as hearing human speech interferes with the language processing part of the brain, which is needed for study Pop Rap Country

3 PREVIOUS STUDIES One study showed that playing quiet classical music during a recorded lecture improved learning from the lecture (Dosseville, F., Laborde, S., & Scelles, N. (2012). Music during lectures: Will students learn better? Learning and Individual Differences, 22, ) Another played a highly repetitive piece of music and compared it with a dissonant, rhythmically varied piece (and to silence) while students were reading. Reading scores were higher in the low-information-load music condition than in the other conditions. (Kiger, D. (1989). Effects of music information load on a reading comprehension task.perceptual and Motor Skills, 69, )

4 HYPOTHESES Playing a game that requires high levels of concentration while listening to music without lyrics will improve concentration levels and mental performance more than listening to music with lyrics Reaction time will be faster with fewer mistakes with music without lyrics, and faster still with no music

5 METHODOLOGY 1. Short survey for subjects about their demographic background SURVEY QUESTIONS Age? Gender? Student or staff? Is English your first language? Do you usually listen to music when you need to concentrate? If yes, does it usually have lyrics? 2. Selected a randomisation method; to give subjects three cards to put in a random order (each card was labelled either lyrics, no lyrics or no music) to randomly decide the order they will take the tests in. 3. Asked subjects to play Stroop test game three times: once with music that has lyrics; once with a version of the same song with no lyrics; and once with no music at all.

6 WHAT IS A STROOP TEST? A Stroop test is a demonstration of how reaction time can be affected with interference.

7 WHAT WAS THE GAME? We found an app called Brain Wars which consists of lots of different games, all designed to test and improve mental performance. One game, Colours of Deception, was very similar to the Stroop test I wanted to use originally.

8 PARTICIPANTS Gender of Participants Age Range of Study Participants 7.5% 30% Male Female 12.5% 45% % 35% TOTAL PARTICIPANTS = 40

9 RESULTS BY TIME MUSIC WITH STANDARD DEVIATION MUSIC WITHOUT STANDARD DEVIATION NO MUSIC STANDARD DEVIATION TIME IN SECONDS (MEAN) T-TEST RESULTS WITH COMPARED TO NO MUSIC WITHOUT COMPARED TO NO MUSIC P-Value =

10 RESULTS BY ACCURACY MUSIC WITH STANDARD DEVIATION MUSIC WITHOUT STANDARD DEVIATION NO MUSIC STANDARD DEVIATION ACCURACY PERCENTAGE (MEAN) T-TEST RESULTS WITH COMPARED TO NO MUSIC WITHOUT COMPARED TO NO MUSIC P-Value =

11 AVERAGE TIME PER ANSWER (SECONDS) COMPARISON BETWEEN GROUPS DO YOU LISTEN TO MUSIC WHILE STUDYING? YES NO MUSIC WITH TOTAL PARTICIPANTS = 40 MUSIC WITHOUT NO MUSIC

12 CONCLUSION Listening to music does affect mental performance and concentration levels On average, people have a greater accuracy percentage when playing this particular game without listening to music People who usually listen to music while studying have a faster response time when trying to concentrate with music playing than people who don t

13 LIMITATIONS Sample size was not big enough; wider range of participants could have yielded more reliable results Time constraints; more data could have been collected with more time and I could have designed a more rigorous experiment Availability of tools needed for test was limited

14 FURTHER STUDIES Investigate whether people usually listening to music with lyrics when studying had an effect on their results Investigate whether English being people s first language had an effect on their results Investigate how different types of music (classical, jazz etc) can affect peoples mental performance and concentration levels

15 THANK YOU! Any questions?