Souza Alessandra S, Leal Barbosa Luís Carlos
Center for Psychology, Faculty of Psychology and Education Sciences, University of Porto, Porto, Portugal.
J Cogn. 2023 May 4;6(1):24. doi: 10.5334/joc.273. eCollection 2023.
People often listen to music while doing cognitive tasks. Yet, whether music harms or helps performance is still debated. Here, we assessed the objective and subjective effects of music with and without lyrics on four cognitive tasks. College students completed tasks of verbal and visual memory, reading comprehension, and arithmetic under three conditions: silence, instrumental music, and music with lyrics. Participants judged their learning during and after each condition. Music with lyrics hindered verbal memory, visual memory, and reading comprehension ( ≈ -0.3), whereas its negative effect ( = -.19) on arithmetic was not credible. Instrumental music (hip-hop lo-fi) did not credibly hinder or improve performance. Participants were aware of the detrimental impact of the lyrics. Instrumental music was, however, sometimes perceived as beneficial. Our results corroborate the general distracting effect of background music. However, faulty metacognition about music's interfering effect cannot fully explain why students often listen to music while studying.
人们在进行认知任务时经常听音乐。然而，音乐对表现是有害还是有益仍存在争议。在此，我们评估了有无歌词的音乐对四项认知任务的客观和主观影响。大学生在三种条件下完成言语和视觉记忆、阅读理解及算术任务：安静、器乐音乐和带歌词的音乐。参与者在每种条件期间及之后对自己的学习情况进行判断。带歌词的音乐阻碍了言语记忆、视觉记忆和阅读理解（约 -0.3），而其对算术的负面影响（=-0.19）不可信。器乐音乐（嘻哈低保真）对表现没有可信的阻碍或提升作用。参与者意识到了歌词的有害影响。然而，器乐音乐有时被认为是有益的。我们的结果证实了背景音乐的总体干扰作用。然而，关于音乐干扰作用的错误元认知并不能完全解释为什么学生在学习时经常听音乐。
