By Anna Takala, Y11 With exams coming up, most people have started stressing out about studying, and trying to find a method that works best for them. Advice can be found all over, but it can be really confusing when everyone says something different; but there’s a reason for that. Everyone’s ideal studying environment is unique. Some people flourish by cramming the night before for hours in silence. Others need relaxing music and short study periods that span across weeks. Only you can know how you work best.
There are however studies that apply to the majority of people. I won’t go in depth of the ones linking to how often, where, when etc to study, but I will explain some of the one that talk about music.
The first studies that looked at how the brain works when listening to different types of music were by Frances Rauscher. In her experiment, 36 students would listen to ten minutes of silence, spoken relaxation instructions or Mozart’s Sonata for 2 pianos in D major (K448) before taking an IQ test that focused on spatial reasoning. They would do different yet similar tests, thought of as equally difficult so that each student would be examined for every condition. The students who had listened to the sonata did better than those who had not. The worst results came from the test which was preceded by silence. The IQ scores were the following: Mozart gave an average of 119 points, the spoken relaxation instructions gave an average of 111 points, and silence gave an average of 110 points. The results clearly indicate that when the students listened to Mozart, they did better in the testing. Now of course, this study alone does not prove anything. It only used one type of music, which was classical music, and did not take into consideration other types of music.
I then chose to do my own experiment on the topic to find what the effect of different music is on concentration. I chose to target concentration since it’s easier to measure. I believe that the effect is different for everyone; so in order to explore this, I used several styles and musicians to come to a conclusion. The experiment used extracts from Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Each subject listened to five 2-minute fragments of music while reading the extract with an additional control experiment which was conducted in silence. The experiment used the following pieces: Mozart’s Sonata for 2 pianos in D major (K448) (classical period), Chopin’s Nocturne Op 9 No 2 (romantic period), Debussy’s Arabesque No 1 (impressionist era), Dave Brubeck’s Take Five (jazz era) and Kanye West’s Famous (rap era; only song with lyrics). Concentration was measured by how many lines each subject could read to each piece of music. Each piece is from a separate musical period, to explore if that has a correlation. The results were partially as expected.
In general, the preference of music and the concentration of the subject had no specific correlation. Rap and silence were consistently found to be the conditions in which subjects were least concentrated. The reasons for rap are fairly straight forward: music with lyrics, a heavy beat and changes in melody showed that subjects had a considerably harder time reading. In silence, the explanation is more complex. The YouTuber Sideways offers an interesting theory; in silence, a person is more likely to be distracted by the few irregular sounds compared to instrumental music with a consistent tempo and style (if you want to find out more, here’s the link to his video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMl4gLWGM-0). The type of instrumental or classical music had no direct effect on concentration, each subject was different. Only some people read best to Mozart, while others were better off with other types of music.
So there you go. Go out there on youtube, and try with different types of music to see what you can best concentrate to. And by the way, music isn’t the only option. You can try white noise, or coffeehouse sounds, just something that you find yourself letting slide into the background. Steer clear of music with lyrics or a heavy beat, and try to use music that you aren’t too familiar with, so that you aren’t humming along rather than memorizing the functional groups of organic chemistry. Who knows what will work best for you. Good luck!
