Bidelman Gavin M, Feng Shi
Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47408, USA.
Program in Neuroscience, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405, USA.
Brain Sci. 2025 May 2;15(5):482. doi: 10.3390/brainsci15050482.
Music has been shown to increase arousal and attention and even facilitate processing during non-musical tasks, including those related to speech and language functions. Mind wandering has been studied in many sustained attention tasks. Here, we investigated the intersection of these two phenomena: the role of mind wandering while listening to familiar/unfamiliar musical excerpts, and its effects on concurrent linguistic processing. We hypothesized that familiar music would be less distracting than unfamiliar music, causing less mind wandering, and consequently benefit concurrent speech perception. Participants ( = 96 young adults) performed a lexical-semantic congruity task where they judged the relatedness of visually presented word pairs while listening to non-vocal classical music (familiar or unfamiliar orchestral pieces), or a non-music environmental sound clip (control) played in the background. Mind wandering episodes were probed intermittently during the task by explicitly asking listeners if their mind was wandering in that moment. The primary outcome was accuracy and reactions times measured during the lexical-semantic judgment task across the three background music conditions (familiar, unfamiliar, and control). We found that listening to familiar music, relative to unfamiliar music or environmental noise, was associated with faster lexical-semantic decisions and a lower incidence of mind wandering. Mind wandering frequency was similar when performing the task when listening to familiar music and control environmental sounds. We infer that familiar music increases task enjoyment, reduces mind wandering, and promotes more rapid lexical access during concurrent lexical processing, by modulating task-related attentional resources. The implications of using music as an aid during academic study and cognitive tasks are discussed.
已有研究表明，音乐能够增强唤醒水平和注意力，甚至在包括与言语和语言功能相关的非音乐任务中也能促进信息处理。在许多持续性注意力任务中都对走神现象进行了研究。在此，我们探究了这两种现象的交叉点：在聆听熟悉/不熟悉的音乐片段时走神的作用，以及它对同时进行的语言处理的影响。我们假设，熟悉的音乐比不熟悉的音乐更不容易分散注意力，导致更少的走神现象，从而有利于同时进行的言语感知。参与者（96名年轻人）进行了一项词汇语义一致性任务，他们在聆听非声乐古典音乐（熟悉或不熟悉的管弦乐曲）或作为背景播放的非音乐环境声音片段（对照）时，判断视觉呈现的单词对的相关性。在任务过程中，通过明确询问听众当时他们的思绪是否在游走，间歇性地探测走神事件。主要结果是在三种背景音乐条件（熟悉、不熟悉和对照）下词汇语义判断任务期间测量的准确性和反应时间。我们发现，相对于不熟悉的音乐或环境噪音，聆听熟悉的音乐与更快的词汇语义决策和更低的走神发生率相关。在聆听熟悉的音乐和对照环境声音时执行任务时，走神频率相似。我们推断，熟悉的音乐通过调节与任务相关的注意力资源，增加了任务乐趣，减少了走神，并在同时进行的词汇处理过程中促进了更快的词汇提取。文中讨论了在学术学习和认知任务中使用音乐作为辅助手段的意义。
