Forde concluded that the student’s comprehension was only affected if they were in the group listening to the fast music. One group of students listened to a slow version of the Mozart piano sonata and the other group listened to a fast version of the Mozart piano sonata. In an experiment done by Macquarie University Professor William Forde Thompson, and his team played Mozart piano sonata while two groups of students read a passage. Imagine listening to “What do you mean” by Justin Bieber while memorizing terms for a bio exam, are you going to be focusing on the bio terms or remembering all the good times you had listening to this song? This led me to the last option besides silence classical music. How can one resist repeating their favorite songs lyrics in their head or out loud as they jam along to it while studying, but singing those lyrics can easily distract one from the current material their studying. It makes sense that listening to music with lyrics hinders your minds ability to study as efficiently as it can without music. Researchers concluded that the changing notes and words of music while memorizing an ordered list impaired one’s cognitive abilities.

It was found that those who listened to complete silence while studying did the best while students who listened to music while studying did the worst.

Participants were then tested on the list they had to memorize. The study involved twenty five participants who were given a list of things in order to memorize. In addition to this study researchers at the University of Wales Institute in Cardiff, United Kingdom found that students were able to study more efficiently in quiet environments than in environments with music playing. Doing these two actions at once is considered multi-tasking and research has found that multitasking can decrease your IQ by ten points. The study found that your brain can struggle to process musical lyrics and do school work simultaneously. I know that I need music to do work, but would listening to music without lyrics or no music at all improve my ability to focus and or the quality of my work? This definitely isn’t the first time I’ve asked myself this question so I decided to look into the effects of listening to instrumental music, music with lyrics, or complete silence while studying.Īccording to the University of Phoenix, listening to music with lyrics can be distracting while you read, study, and write. I am currently sitting at the library right now listening to “Circle Down” by Ayer wondering if the catchy lyrics are distracting me from writing this blog. Personally, I can’t do school work without listening to my current favorite music, but I know that “studying music” varies from person to person. If you’ve ever people watched at the library, which you probably have considering any sight is better than the work in front of you, you’ve probably noticed that the majority of people have headphones in.

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