I often wondered whether those little buds in my ears delivering a soothing wave of music were helping or hindering my revision. So I did a bit of detective work.
The results? Broadly speaking, music is a bit of a cognitive criminal, stealing precious resources away. Music with lyrics is the worst, as it soaks up important language processing.
But listening to it before work can improve your mood and your cognitive prowess. So music that makes you smile is good before work; after that silence is golden.
So it's iPod on before work, iPod off when you start.
If you are anything like me and get distracted by tiny things like a dripping tap down the road, I suggest getting some earplugs. I have stuck a permanent link on the side bar (under 'Previous Goodies') to the site where I bought a load for my revision.
For people who wondered how I came to this conclusion or just want to burn some more time before getting back into the revision canoe, read on...
In 1993, Rauscher, Shaw and Ky reported the finding that listening to a Mozart piano sonata (K. 448) enhanced spatial test performance in adults for a period of 15 minutes after presentation.
This was dubbed the "Mozart effect" (Knox, 1993) and was inaccurately transmuted into public understanding as 'listening to Mozart makes your cleverer'.
Laughably, this distortion of the evidence led to a cottage industry being set up for parents who wanted their kids to be smarter as well as the misbegotten policy in the state of Georgia to send new babies Mozart CDs.
Unfortunately the evidence only points towards better mental rotation abilities (meta-analysis by Hetland, 2000) and this may only be due to the music putting you in a better mood for cognitive tasks (Schellenberg & Hallam, 2005; or here). Mozart isn't really important either (Smith, Osborne, Mann, Jones, & White, 2004).
Banbury, Macken, Tremblay, and Jones (2001) and Beaman (2005, review) have shown that there is a cost to 'auditory distraction' although some people aren't affected by it (Neath et al., 2003).
Added to that, Oswald et al. (2000) among others (Neely & LeCompte, 1999; Jones et al., 1990; Martin et al.,1988) have shown that meaningful speech not directly related to the task at hand is distracting.
Salamé and Baddeley (1989) report that music with speech is more cognitively disruptive to short term recall than speechless music (which still had a negative effect, just a smaller one). As information needs to go through short term memory in order to get into long term memory this can't be a good thing.
The results? Broadly speaking, music is a bit of a cognitive criminal, stealing precious resources away. Music with lyrics is the worst, as it soaks up important language processing.
But listening to it before work can improve your mood and your cognitive prowess. So music that makes you smile is good before work; after that silence is golden.
So it's iPod on before work, iPod off when you start.
If you are anything like me and get distracted by tiny things like a dripping tap down the road, I suggest getting some earplugs. I have stuck a permanent link on the side bar (under 'Previous Goodies') to the site where I bought a load for my revision.
In 1993, Rauscher, Shaw and Ky reported the finding that listening to a Mozart piano sonata (K. 448) enhanced spatial test performance in adults for a period of 15 minutes after presentation.
This was dubbed the "Mozart effect" (Knox, 1993) and was inaccurately transmuted into public understanding as 'listening to Mozart makes your cleverer'.
Laughably, this distortion of the evidence led to a cottage industry being set up for parents who wanted their kids to be smarter as well as the misbegotten policy in the state of Georgia to send new babies Mozart CDs.
Unfortunately the evidence only points towards better mental rotation abilities (meta-analysis by Hetland, 2000) and this may only be due to the music putting you in a better mood for cognitive tasks (Schellenberg & Hallam, 2005; or here). Mozart isn't really important either (Smith, Osborne, Mann, Jones, & White, 2004).
Banbury, Macken, Tremblay, and Jones (2001) and Beaman (2005, review) have shown that there is a cost to 'auditory distraction' although some people aren't affected by it (Neath et al., 2003).
Added to that, Oswald et al. (2000) among others (Neely & LeCompte, 1999; Jones et al., 1990; Martin et al.,1988) have shown that meaningful speech not directly related to the task at hand is distracting.
Salamé and Baddeley (1989) report that music with speech is more cognitively disruptive to short term recall than speechless music (which still had a negative effect, just a smaller one). As information needs to go through short term memory in order to get into long term memory this can't be a good thing.
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