How does lyrical versus non-lyrical music impact the attention performance of introverted versus extroverted high school students?
Lyrics
Distraction
Familiarity
Genres
Personality
Music Helps Focus
Music Hinders Focus
Gap
Music that is used while studying and music that is used for sleep share similar musical features, genres and subgroups (Scarratt et al. 2018)
“Nowadays, another explanation, the mood-arousal hypothesis, is more commonly accepted to account for the increased cognitive performance while listening to music."
Background music: Effects on attention performance (Shih et al. 2011)
"...it may also negatively affect employee work behavior and performance.”
The effect of preferred background music on task-focus in sustained attention (Kiss and Linnell 2020)
“The regression models did not show any association between lyrics and mind-wandering states (p = 0.15), task-focus states (p = 0.38), or external distraction states (p = 0.69)”
Negative Effect
Background music: Effects on attention performance (Shih et al. 2011)
“Music with lyrics is a more complex stimulus than instrumental music alone, which explains the current finding that background music with lyrics has an even larger negative effect on attention performance compared to that without lyrics”
Music is as distracting as noise: the differential distraction of background music and noise on the cognitive test performance of introverts and extroverts (Furnham and Strbac 2015)
“...introverts are also more negatively affected by background noise.”
The Influence of Musical Distraction of Varying Complexity on the Cognitive Performance of Extroverts and Introvert (Furnham and Allass 1999)
“In comparison to the silence condition, the performance of extroverts was somewhat improved in the presence of simple background music, but the greatest recall was achieved in the complex-music condition. The performance of the introvert subjects, in direct contrast, was impaired by the presence of any musical distraction, most significantly by that music categorized as complex.”
Music is as distracting as noise: the differential distraction of background music and noise on the cognitive test performance of introverts and extroverts (Furnham and Strbac 2015)
“Music that is most distracting is fast, familiar, vocal music usually that is often known by, chosen and liked by the listener (Furnham and Allass 1999).”
Rapid Brain Responses to Familiar vs. Unfamiliar Music – an EEG and Pupillometry study (Jagiello et al. 2018)
"Therefore, for the ‘main’ group the ‘familiar’ and ‘unfamiliar’ songs did not just differ in terms recognizability but also in terms of emotional engagement and affect."
Neural Correlates of Familiarity in Music Listening: A Systematic Review and a Neuroimaging Meta-Analysis (Freitas et al. 2018)
"The familiarity principle, also known as the “mere exposure effect,” was first described by Zajonc (1968). It is a psychological phenomenon which suggests that the more exposed we are to someone or something, the more we like it.”
Neural Correlates of Familiarity in Music Listening: A Systematic Review and a Neuroimaging Meta-Analysis (Freitas et al. 2018)
“In sum, ERP studies have suggested an increased attention in frontal brain areas, around 400 ms, when listening to familiar music, and prenatal exposure to a melody can induce neural representations that last for 4 months.”
Music that is used while studying and music that is used for sleep share similar musical features, genres and subgroups (Scarratt et al. 2018)
“Furthermore, Sleep and Study music share a similar distribution in all audio features, do not differ in Liveness or Instrumentalness, include similar genres and have similar subgroups.”
The effect of different genres of music and silence on relaxation and anxiety: A randomized controlled trial (Malakoutikhah et al. 2023)
“According to our results, listening to Pop, Western Classical, Persian Traditional music, and silent moments increased relaxation in healthy individuals, but listening to Rock music did not have statistically significant effect on relaxation.”
Network Science and the Effects of Music Preference on Functional Brain Connectivity: From Beethoven to Eminem (Wilkins et al. 2023)
“However, music listening preferences are highly individualized and culturally diverse, and different types of music can vary substantially in their melodic and harmonic features and rhythmic complexity.”
Inconclusive
The effect of different genres of music and silence on relaxation and anxiety: A randomized controlled trial (Malakoutikhah et al. 2023)
“Although the literature review confirmed the positive effect of a different kind of music on healthy individuals and patients, some recent studies did not confirm the positive impact of listening to music.”
The Emotional Effect of Background Music on Selective Attention of Adults (Nadon et al. 2021)
“A key finding of this study is a negative effect of music-matched noise stimuli (low pleasantness) on attentional performance. These results converge with previous work by Masataka and Perlovsky (2013) and Slevc et al. (2013) showing lower performance on a similar Stroop task in the presence of dissonant music (sound pairings perceived as generally unpleasant or possessing low-pleasantness valence).”
The effect of preferred background music on task-focus in sustained attention (Kiss and Linnell 2020)
“In terms of the arousal framework already outlined above, when presented with a very simple task, background music should increase arousal to an optimal/intermediate level and, thus, increase performance.”
The Influence of Musical Distraction of Varying Complexity on the Cognitive Performance of Extroverts and Introvert (Furnham and Allass 1999)
“The experiment revealed no significant main effect of background music condition, indicating that the presence of either simple or complex music neither enhanced nor inhibited performance in the three tests beyond the scores achieved in silence.”
Finding a solid answer for whether or not music is distracting by specifying it for different types of people, and with or without lyrics, as this was also found to have conflicting and limited opinions
The Emotional Effect of Background Music on Selective Attention of Adults (Nadon et al. 2021)
“Finally, based on the results of this study, we can therefore recommend that tasks requiring selective attention can be performed in an environment of silence as well as with pleasant instrumental music.”
“A key finding of this study is a negative effect of music-matched noise stimuli (low pleasantness) on attentional performance. These results converge with previous work by Masataka and Perlovsky (2013) and Slevc et al. (2013) showing lower performance on a similar Stroop task in the presence of dissonant music (sound pairings perceived as generally unpleasant or possessing low-pleasantness valence).”