Do you listen to music while you are studying for a test? As a sophomore in high school, I have witnessed many students studying for exams or reading for pleasure while listening to music. This led me to wonder: Is listening to music while studying effective, or distracting?
You may have heard of the “Mozart effect”, a theory stating that listening to Mozart will increase your brainpower and will result in an overall increase in effectiveness while studying, as you can absorb more information. This is because the relaxing music can lower blood pressure. However, many students that I know prefer listening to songs containing lyrics rather than classical music while studying. One reason is that they feel the lyrics motivate them. Nonetheless, listening to music with lyrics may decrease your productivity and ability to recall information afterwards, leading to an overall decrease in the effectiveness of studying. This is also proven by the attentional resources theory in psychology, which claims that people have a fixed amount of attention available to distribute among cognitive tasks. This means that having lyrics in the background will take away attention from studying as the brain focuses on understanding the lyrics.
There is a lot of research done regarding why music will help you study better. One study states that listening to music allows the trigger of dopamine release in our brains. This promotes happiness and excitement, which could possibly motivate us to study, as we are in a positive mood.
On the other hand, some researchers claim that music can harm your performance while studying. Listening to music may impair cognitive abilities when trying to memorize. This is because of the fast changing notes and words in songs. Some also call this the “irrelevant sound effect”. Especially when reading, listening to spoken lyrics can impair comprehension. If you are able to understand the lyrics while reading, it will impair your ability to comprehend the reading.
In conclusion, I believe that listening to music could potentially benefit your studying habits. If the song does not have lyrics, it would not distract you as much as a lyrical song. Furthermore, it can boost your happiness and overall motivation. However, it is important to be mindful that the effects of music can depend on the person, and that it may not be beneficial for some students compared to others.
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