Listening to classical music vs. music with lyrics vs.
complete silence while
studying?
If you’ve ever people watched at the library, which you probably have considering any sight is
better than the work in front of you, you’ve probably noticed that the majority of people have
headphones in. Personally, I can’t do school work without listening to my current favorite music,
but I know that “studying music” varies from person to person. I am currently sitting at the
library right now listening to “Circle Down” by Ayer wondering if the catchy lyrics are
distracting me from writing this blog. I know that I need music to do work, but would listening to
music without lyrics or no music at all improve my ability to focus and or the quality of my
work? This definitely isn’t the first time I’ve asked myself this question so I decided to look into
the effects of listening to instrumental music, music with lyrics, or complete silence while
studying.
According to the University of Phoenix, listening to music with lyrics can be distracting while
you read, study, and write. The study found that your brain can struggle to process musical lyrics
and do school work simultaneously. Doing these two actions at once is considered multi-tasking
and research has found that multitasking can decrease your IQ by ten points.
In addition to this study researchers at the University of Wales Institute in Cardiff, United
Kingdom found that students were able to study more efficiently in quiet environments than in
environments with music playing. The study involved twenty five participants who were given a
list of things in order to memorize. Participants were then tested on the list they had to
memorize. It was found that those who listened to complete silence while studying did the best
while students who listened to music while studying did the worst. Researchers concluded that
the changing notes and words of music while memorizing an ordered list impaired one’s
cognitive abilities. It makes sense that listening to music with lyrics hinders your minds ability to
study as efficiently as it can without music. How can one resist repeating their favorite songs
lyrics in their head or out loud as they jam along to it while studying, but singing those lyrics can
easily distract one from the current material their studying. Imagine listening to “What do you
mean” by Justin Bieber while memorizing terms for a bio exam, are you going to be focusing on
the bio terms or remembering all the good times you had listening to this song? This led me to
the last option besides silence; classical music.
In an experiment done by Macquarie University Professor William Forde Thompson, and his
team played Mozart piano sonata while two groups of students read a passage. One group of
students listened to a slow version of the Mozart piano sonata and the other group listened to a
fast version of the Mozart piano sonata. Forde concluded that the student’s comprehension was
only affected if they were in the group listening to the fast music. Forde proceeded to note that
he thinks, “The reason why music doesn’t impact our thinking as much as it should is because
music has the ability to put us in a better mood, which therefore increases our IQ.”
There are clearly various different opinions on listening to music while studying, but I think that
the general take away is students should do what works best for them, whether its listening to
silence, classical, or music with lyrics. Maybe if you feel your grades could potentially be better
try switching up your background noise.
