Music
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Gwern Branwen
Aug 2, 2012, 4:40:28 PM8/2/12
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http://bps-research-digest.blogspot.com/2012/08/music-we-like-is-more-distracting-than.html
fulltext: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/85192141/2012-perham.pdf
> In lab studies, people who listen to music they like, generally perform better at mental tasks afterwards, an effect that's been attributed to boosts in mood and arousal. But what about the effect of background music that plays on during a task - more akin what we do in real life? This is actually less studied. The traditional mood-arousal literature would predict it to be beneficial too, especially if the music is to the listener's taste.
>
> However, there's another line of research, known as the "Irrelevant Sound Effect", that's all about the way background sounds can interfere with our short-term memory for ordered lists, which would be a bad thing for many work-related tasks. These studies show that the distraction is greater when the sound is more acoustically varied - just like your typical pop song. Based on this, Nick Perham and Martinne Sykora made a counter-intuitive prediction - background music that you like will be more detrimental to working memory than unappealing music, so long as the liked music has more acoustical variation than the disliked music.
>
> Twenty-five undergrads completed several serial recall tasks. They were presented with strings of eight consonants and had to repeat them back from memory in the correct order. Performance was best in the quiet condition, but the key finding was that particiants' performance was worse when they completed the memory task with a song they liked playing over headphones (Infernal's "From Paris to Berlin"), compared with a song they disliked (songs such as "Acid Bath" from the grind core metal band Repulsion). In case you're wondering, participants who liked Repulsion were excluded from the study.
Particularly relevant to my suspicions:
> A further intriguing detail from the study is the participants' lack of insight into the degree of distraction associated with each type of music. Asked to judge their own performance, they determined correctly that their memory was more accurate in the quiet condition, but they didn't realise that their performance was poorest whilst listening to the music they liked.
--
gwern
http://www.gwern.net
fulltext: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/85192141/2012-perham.pdf
> In lab studies, people who listen to music they like, generally perform better at mental tasks afterwards, an effect that's been attributed to boosts in mood and arousal. But what about the effect of background music that plays on during a task - more akin what we do in real life? This is actually less studied. The traditional mood-arousal literature would predict it to be beneficial too, especially if the music is to the listener's taste.
>
> However, there's another line of research, known as the "Irrelevant Sound Effect", that's all about the way background sounds can interfere with our short-term memory for ordered lists, which would be a bad thing for many work-related tasks. These studies show that the distraction is greater when the sound is more acoustically varied - just like your typical pop song. Based on this, Nick Perham and Martinne Sykora made a counter-intuitive prediction - background music that you like will be more detrimental to working memory than unappealing music, so long as the liked music has more acoustical variation than the disliked music.
>
> Twenty-five undergrads completed several serial recall tasks. They were presented with strings of eight consonants and had to repeat them back from memory in the correct order. Performance was best in the quiet condition, but the key finding was that particiants' performance was worse when they completed the memory task with a song they liked playing over headphones (Infernal's "From Paris to Berlin"), compared with a song they disliked (songs such as "Acid Bath" from the grind core metal band Repulsion). In case you're wondering, participants who liked Repulsion were excluded from the study.
Particularly relevant to my suspicions:
> A further intriguing detail from the study is the participants' lack of insight into the degree of distraction associated with each type of music. Asked to judge their own performance, they determined correctly that their memory was more accurate in the quiet condition, but they didn't realise that their performance was poorest whilst listening to the music they liked.
--
gwern
http://www.gwern.net
Aman Abdullahi Idle
Aug 2, 2012, 6:37:54 PM8/2/12
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Time to stop listening to Beethoven and Mozart while studying then.
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adhdParent
Aug 3, 2012, 9:26:43 AM8/3/12
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Thanks, that's good to know. I will get my daughter to listen to Justin Bieber BEFORE doing homework, not during. :-)
Gwern Branwen
Sep 19, 2013, 12:29:22 PM9/19/13
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"Background music as a risk factor for distraction among young-novice
drivers", Brodsky & Slor 2013
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/182368464/2013-brodsky.pdf ;
abstract:
> There are countless beliefs about the power of music during driving. The last thing one would think about is: how safe is it to listen or sing to music? Unfortunately, collisions linked to music devices have been known for some time; adjusting the radio controls, swapping tape-cassettes and compact-discs, or searching through MP3 files, are all forms of distraction that can result in a near-crash or crash. While the decrement of vehicular performance can also occur from capacity interference to central attention, whether or not music listening is a contributing factor to distraction is relatively unknown. The current study explored the effects of driver-preferred music on driver behavior. 85 young-novice drivers completed six trips in an instrumented Learners Vehicle. The study found that all participants committed at-least 3 driver deficiencies; 27 needed a verbal warning/command and 17 required a steering or braking intervention to prevent an accident. While there were elevated positive moods and enjoyment for trips with driver-preferred music, this background also produced the most frequent severe driver miscalculations and inaccuracies, violations, and aggressive driving. However, trips with music structurally designed to generate moderate levels of perceptual complexity, improved driver behavior and increased driver safety. The study is the first within-subjects on-road high-dose double-exposure clinical-trial investigation of musical stimuli on driver behavior.
A copy of a WSJ article summarizing the paper can be found in
http://finance.dir.groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/lucknow-ca/conversations/topics/52856
--
gwern
http://www.gwern.net
drivers", Brodsky & Slor 2013
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/182368464/2013-brodsky.pdf ;
abstract:
> There are countless beliefs about the power of music during driving. The last thing one would think about is: how safe is it to listen or sing to music? Unfortunately, collisions linked to music devices have been known for some time; adjusting the radio controls, swapping tape-cassettes and compact-discs, or searching through MP3 files, are all forms of distraction that can result in a near-crash or crash. While the decrement of vehicular performance can also occur from capacity interference to central attention, whether or not music listening is a contributing factor to distraction is relatively unknown. The current study explored the effects of driver-preferred music on driver behavior. 85 young-novice drivers completed six trips in an instrumented Learners Vehicle. The study found that all participants committed at-least 3 driver deficiencies; 27 needed a verbal warning/command and 17 required a steering or braking intervention to prevent an accident. While there were elevated positive moods and enjoyment for trips with driver-preferred music, this background also produced the most frequent severe driver miscalculations and inaccuracies, violations, and aggressive driving. However, trips with music structurally designed to generate moderate levels of perceptual complexity, improved driver behavior and increased driver safety. The study is the first within-subjects on-road high-dose double-exposure clinical-trial investigation of musical stimuli on driver behavior.
A copy of a WSJ article summarizing the paper can be found in
http://finance.dir.groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/lucknow-ca/conversations/topics/52856
--
gwern
http://www.gwern.net
David Wagner
Sep 19, 2013, 12:46:16 PM9/19/13
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Am 19.09.2013 18:29, schrieb Gwern Branwen:
> However, trips with music structurally designed to generate moderate levels of perceptual complexity, improved driver behavior and increased driver safety.
What does that mean?
> However, trips with music structurally designed to generate moderate levels of perceptual complexity, improved driver behavior and increased driver safety.
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