Can Preference for Background Music Mediate the Irrelevant Sound Effect?

While some studies have shown that listening to music before performing a task can have positive results on cognitive performance, this study was designed to determine the effects that simultaneously listening to music and performing a task would have.  Also, the study utilized different types of sounds or styles of music can have, as it was believed that not all would produce the same results.  Interestingly, the study found that almost all types of music distracted the participants to some degree, leaving the control group in silence with the best results.  However, participants did not believe that their performance was hampered by the music styles that showed lesser results.  The steady-state speech sound (acoustic type music without lyrics) was the only type of music that was not distracting, and had results similar to being in silence.  While the results of this study should be examined further, they are significant, showing that any speech in song can distract the listener from his or her task.

I was interested in researching this topic as my younger sister is conducting a small scale study on this topic for her 7th grade science fair topic.  I also found it interesting as many college students, myself included, often listen to music while studying.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/store/10.1002/acp.1731/asset/acp1731.pdf;jsessionid=0B987ECCF01EB985A342F44A2261DB29.f03t03?v=1&t=hngsm093&s=f0f96bcdf24d59d183883e5646e7d2429020ee07