Browsing by Author "Linnoinen, Maaria"

Objective. Listening music while studying is a common habit among students. However, despite the numerous studies conducted, it is still disputed whether and how background music influences learning and concentration. In addition, the results have not been comparable due to variety of theoretical framework and methodological quality in studies. To clarify the variety of paradigms in different studies Ferreri and Verga (2016) have recently proposed a model explaining the effect of music on verbal learning and concentration. Thus, the aim of this thesis is to discuss the effects of background music on learning and concentration and identify factors explaining the results. Method. This thesis is a review of recent studies on the effects of background music on learning and concentration. Since majority of the recent studies have focused on adults only studies with adult participants are considered. Results and conclusions. Background music has no general effect on learning and concentration as compared to no music. More detailed examination of studies reveals that different aspects of mu-sic, the task and personal characteristics can moderate the impact of background music. Individual musical features cannot explain the impact of background music, but the simultaneous variation of its features such as complexity can alternate the influence in learning mechanisms. Some effects might be explained by the type and the difficulty of the task. Comparison of different types and the difficulty of the task reveals that background music has detrimental effect on reading comprehension and in contrast, in simple tasks (i.e. simple math tests) background music might be beneficial for the processing. Individual differences might be explained by the preference for back-ground music and finding the presence of music distracting, indicating that background music might distract the learning of those with lower tendency to listen music. Nevertheless, some results are inconsistent and consequently these single factors might not be helpful to explaining the results. It is possible that these factors might moderate the effects simultaneously. In addition, the impact of learning context should be taken into account in further studies. It is also possible that several mechanism moderate the effects as Ferreri and Verga (2016) propose in their model. The impact of attention, arousal and mood, and emotions and reward must be considered in future studies on the effects of background music.