“Please can we listen to music while we work?”
How many times have you heard that plea? Students say the music helps them focus, and they will do better. But is that really true?
According to most research studies, the answer is no. Although motivation increases, performance on literacy tasks decreases when students listen to music with lyrics. Since language-processing centers are activated while listening to music with lyrics, reading and writing activities become more difficult. The brain fights to process two types of stimuli at once, and students struggle later to remember information they read.
In a 1977 study by Smith and Morris, the researchers discovered participants performed the worst when they listened to music they liked, and they did the best on demanding cognitive tasks when there was a silent work environment. Similarly, in a study two decades later in 1997, researchers looked at personality types. Would music impact students who are introverts differently from students who are extroverts? Surprising, researchers found music was distracting to both categories of students, but introverts were impacted the greatest.
A more recent 2015 study also found that lyrics were distracting during reading and writing, comparing it to “holding a conversation while another person talks over you …while also strumming a guitar.” Interestingly, the study found that a loud room with lots of talking is equally distracting during language tasks. This last finding was the most interesting to me because many teachers allow a great deal of noise in their classrooms while students are working. For that reason, I enforce a quiet work time unless students are working with a partner or group.
Glenn Schellenberg, a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, found in a study that students’ reading comprehension was impacted particularly by loud and fast music. He found one positive benefit, however; music had an impact on mood, which helped keep students focused when doing non-language-based work. For example, when organizing, cooking, cleaning, or exercising, music energizes people and puts them in a better mood, improving their performance on those tasks.
So what does all this mean for our classrooms?
Although I know I can’t stop students from listening to music at home as they do homework, I set a strict “no music” rule in my classroom when students are engaged in reading or writing tasks. I also tell students my reasoning based on the research. I’ve also considered doing an in-class study of my own in which students listen to music while completing a reading assignment followed by another completed in full silence. It would be interesting to have students speculate on how they thought they did, and then have them grade their answers to questions to see if their perception of reality is accurate.
During the 50 minutes a day I have students in class, I want them to perform to their full potential. While some students are likely to function outside the norm, I know most students will respond similarly to those in the studies I’ve read. That’s why quiet work time on literacy tasks is a must.
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