{"id":4984,"date":"2019-09-20T08:00:26","date_gmt":"2019-09-20T13:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/braindevs.net\/blog\/blog\/?p=4984"},"modified":"2019-09-13T19:47:24","modified_gmt":"2019-09-14T00:47:24","slug":"why-and-when-does-music-interfere-with-reading","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/why-and-when-does-music-interfere-with-reading\/","title":{"rendered":"Why, and When, Does Music Interfere with Reading?"},"content":{"rendered":"

We all know that listening to music makes life better.<\/p>\n

And, we teachers all know teachers that listening to music while you study makes studying harder and less effective<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

For instance, in this study<\/a>, adults who read in silence scored more than 20% higher<\/strong> on a quiz about that reading passage than others who listened to music with lyrics.<\/p>\n

Indeed. 20% higher. (You can read more about that study here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Even though we’ve seen this research finding many times, we might want a deeper understanding of this question.<\/p>\n

For instance: are there particular points during reading that are particularly vulnerable to interference from music?<\/p>\n

Answer #1: New Songs<\/h2>\n

To answer this question, researchers used eye-tracking technology to see how readers behaved with background music playing<\/a>.<\/p>\n

One answer that jumped out: the change from one song to the next interrupted fluent eye movements.<\/p>\n

This finding, of course, makes intuitive sense.<\/p>\n

When a new song comes on, we automatically perk up our ears. Even subliminally, we notice a change in our background circumstances. The attention we devote to that change makes it harder to attend to our reading.<\/p>\n

The result: less fluent eye movements.<\/p>\n

Professor Todd Rose (at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education) used to suggest that–if students insisted on listening to music–they should make a playlist of songs. Those songs should have no lyrics.<\/p>\n

And, crucially, students should\u00a0not press shuffle.\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>They should, in other words, listen to those songs in the same order<\/em> each time. Over time, students will habituate to those songs in that order, and be less distracted by the switch.<\/p>\n

This research supports Rose’s suggestion.<\/p>\n

Answer #2: Vocabulary<\/h2>\n

The second time that music particularly distracts readers: when they face an unusual word. As the authors poetically put it:<\/p>\n

“An irrelevant auditory signal may impair sublexical processing of low-frequency words during first-pass reading.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

“An irrelevant auditory signal” means “music,” and “low-frequency words” means “difficult vocabulary.”<\/p>\n

So, if you were listening to music while you read that paragraph you’d face particular difficulties. After all, in included several low-frequency words.<\/p>\n

Based on this observation, I think we should worry more about homework that includes complex vocabulary–and, I’m guessing, even more so about homework that includes foreign-language vocabulary.<\/p>\n

In other words: while listening to music is bad for reading comprehension, it’s\u00a0especially bad<\/em> for comprehension of passages with tricky vocab.<\/p>\n

To Sum Up<\/h2>\n

We’ve always known that students make their cognitive lives harder when they listen to music during homework.<\/p>\n

Now we have even more evidence showing when, and why.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eye-tracking technology helps researchers explain when music disrupts fluent reading. Students: take note!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":4987,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[87,103],"class_list":["post-4984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lb-blog","tag-music","tag-study-advice"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4984"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4984\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4989,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4984\/revisions\/4989"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}