Daniel Willingham--Science & Education
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Should Students Listen to Background Music While They Read?

9/17/2018

 
On September 15 I tweeted about a new meta-analysis that examines the impact of auditory distraction on reading. It’s an issue of broad concern, as many of us read at work in noisy office environments, and when we read for pleasure we may be on a subway, at a playground, and so on. Students and educators are keenly interested in this issue, because some students like to read with music on in the background and some educators wonder whether that affects comprehension.

The article concluded that that background noise, speech, and music all have small but reliable negative impacts on reading comprehension.
In response, several folks on twitter commented as much to say “ok, so we should tell kids not read with music on.”

I am not so sure.

This is a point of interpretation around which Todd Rose framed his book, The End of Average. Now I didn’t care much for this book, because I thought Rose took a valid concern and ran much too far with it, but here it’s applicable.

An average is meant as a summary that gives you a sense of the central tendency of a distribution. That doesn’t mean it is a good representative of every data point. To use Rose’s example, if you measure a large group of airplane pilots and find their average height is 69 inches, and then design airplane cockpits assuming “pilots are 69 inches tall,” well, you’ll be disappointed. The cockpit will be a good fit for a few, but will be too big or too small for most.

I criticized Rose’s book because I argued that (1) many principles of the mind do apply pretty well across the board—everyone’s attention is limited, for example and; (2) psychologists are generally aware of the problem Rose identifies. The entire subfield called individual differences is devoted to identifying ways in which we all differ.

The influence of background music on reading may be a case where Rose’s warning is pertinent. The meta-analysis reports a small, consistent cost to reading comprehension when listening to music. Looking at the breakdown of individual studies it’s easy to see that the studies trend towards the stated conclusion. 
Picture
But there is also a lot of variability—I’m not referring to the dot representing the mean of each study, but to the dotted lines around each of those dots, which shows the variability associated with that mean.

​Contrast that with the studies on the effect that background speech has on reading comprehension. 
Picture
What this indicates is that, while mean of the grand distribution may show a small hit to comprehension when background music plays, it's NOT the case that every child reads a little worse with background music on. Part, but not all, of that variability is noisy measurement.

As the article notes, researchers have sought variables that differentiate why music hurts, fails to influence, or even helps comprehension. For a while they thought introversion/extraversion might be the answer, but that didn’t pan out. Still, I think this is a case where individual difference play an important role. 

As far as practice goes, I think this finding could be offered as support for a decision not to play music to every child in a classroom. In a big sample, you’d say it will reduce mean comprehension. But I don’t think it supports telling individual children not to listen to music while they read. (Note too, I see this as one factor among many a teacher would consider in a decision of this sort.)

Here’s another reason I personally wouldn’t be too quick to interpret this meta-analysis as showing people should never listen to music while reading. Some of my students say they like music playing in the background because it makes them less anxious. It could be that a laboratory situation (with no stakes) means these students aren’t anxious (and hence show little cost when the music is off) but would have a harder time reading without music when they are studying. In other words, the laboratory situation may underestimate the frequency that music provides a benefit for a subset of students. 
Rob Monk
9/17/2018 05:32:03 am

And then throw in "task switching" which many students do when listening to music. They don't like that song so the hit the shuffle button. Task switching plus background music will have an even larger negative effect on comprehension.
Have any studies looked at task switch and listening to music together. It’s rare for students not to do both.

Daniel Willingham
9/17/2018 10:07:27 am

Yes, interesting point...this factor would make home worse than lab for music listeners if I'm following you...

L LeGrys
9/17/2018 10:34:50 am

I wonder if the level of distraction is in an inverse ratio to a person's sensitivity to music. As Aristotle observed:

"... Pleasures arising from one kind of Workings hinder other Workings; for instance, people who are fond of flute-music cannot keep their attention to conversation or discourse when they catch the sound of a flute; because they take more Pleasure in flute-playing than in the Working they are at the time engaged on; in other words, the Pleasure attendant on flute-playing destroys the Working of conversation or discourse. .."

Daniel Willingham
9/17/2018 10:37:57 am

Really interesting thought! I don't know if any individual experiment has examined this.

Amanda Freeman
9/17/2018 12:32:48 pm

But what about using music as a screen for distractions? When students are studying in school, there are lots of distracting noises - so they use the music to create a private space in which they do the work. I wish they did not listen to music with words (that ship has sailed), and I agree about the "shuffle" issue, but I do think music can facilitate concentration at times.

Julia
9/19/2018 05:30:59 am

Fully agree with this. I found that if I allowed students to listen to music for certain tasks, it meant they would not chat. They worked and the room was quieter overall so everyone gained.

Robert Sim link
9/17/2018 06:19:52 pm

Fascinating as ever. Have there ever been any studies done into the effect of listening to music while being creative, as opposed to interpreting a text? For example, I write poetry (in a very amateur way) and I find that the rhythm of music in particular seems to impart a rhythm and discipline to my verse (such as it is). I feel I write better listening to music than without.

Gail B link
9/17/2018 06:30:48 pm

Thanks for this post Daniel, I think you raise a valid point that goes beyond reading - more to the many different, possible interpretations from any meta-analysis! I understand that meta-analysis(as a process and publication) is intended to summarise a heap of research. The problem is what's "lost" in that summary, when studies can be from Kindergarten to Grade 12. Any meta-analysis is a GREAT start to learning about any topic - THEN by reading more closely, we can learn what might be useful, and then look at options that fit with their classroom... So, I think your post starts to provide a great guide to "how to use and interpret a meta-analysis"! Thanks,

Franck Ramus link
9/19/2018 12:20:17 pm

I wonder, what is the evidence that "not all of that variability is noisy measurement"?
I am not very familiar with those studies, but I imagine many students being given a reading comprehension test, once in silence, once in music, in counterbalanced order. Sure, some students will score higher in the music condition. But does this reflect a reliable music advantage for those students? In order to know that, we would need to administer each student at least 10 (if not 20) reading comprehension tests in each condition. Then, we would be in a position to estimate how much of the observed variability reflects reliable individual differences, and how much random within-participant variability. But how many studies have done that?

Dan Willingham
10/5/2018 09:25:55 am

Franck, I don't think any have conducted the exp as you describe...in fact, many are between S's. They're using large enough N's to power these conclusions, and living with between subject variability

Dylan Smith
9/20/2018 04:51:28 pm

I read a brilliant study last year by Costa-Faidella et al. (2017) on the manner in which auditory cortices interpret the world when a variety of sounds and streams of sounds are within earshot and competing for attention. Attention sets up a winner-take-all situation by simply inhibiting unattended representations versus enhancing an attended representation.
Task-irrelevant sound streams actually receive some parallel processing in the background, but are largely ignored and are confined to the auditory cortices. Meanwhile, a more active auditory stream may involve other networks, e.g., motor, or executive control networks.
While reading, I believe all background/ambient sounds and streams are likely to be inhibited unless (a) they either are or contain especially salient sounds, e.g., words, your name, a loud cymbal, etc., or (b) you like to move as you read -- especially your head -- as movements can cause potentially distracting phase resets of most/all streams.

Kevin Miller
10/4/2018 02:37:08 pm

Just came across this and we have a recent paper in JEP:LMC that is consistent with your interpretation of the noise. For college students reading with music there aren't really effects on comprehension although there are on eye tracking measures. The music (particularly unpredictable parts like the jump to a new song) disrupt reading, but college students in general are good at repairing their reading processes. So it takes them longer and there are more regressions and rereading, but it doesn't show up in comprehension.

We wracked our brains to think of some way in which this could be a "desirable difficulty" and concluded that it's not. On the other hand, if students use music to get them to study as opposed to doing something else, than the difference between reading vs. not reading is bound to be higher than that between reading with music vs. reading in silence.

Here's the citation - Zhang, H., Miller, K., Cleveland, R., & Cortina, K. (2018). How Listening to Music Affects Reading: Evidence From Eye Tracking. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition. Advance online publication. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/xlm0000544.

and here's the link: http://psycnet.apa.org/record/2018-04020-001

Daniel Willingham
10/5/2018 09:27:26 am

Kevin, thanks for the note on this. I agree, def. doesn't sound like a desirable difficulty, for which (if memory serve) Bjork specifies the difficulty must be in line with the aspect of the experience you hope to remember, not an incidental feature...right?

Kevin Miller
10/5/2018 10:02:45 am

It's not clear to me. My sense (e.g., Yue, Castel, & Bjork, 2013) is that they'll say it's a desirable difficult iff it improves learning. And that's a reasonable position, although a confusing one (see, e.g., this font with the great name Sans Forgetica - http://sansforgetica.rmit, although I'm skeptical that it would have the intended effect).

I suspect music may work very differently in the wild vs. in the lab.

Along those lines, I listened to a great interview with Michael Lewis where he said he puts together a playlist when he's writing a book and then only listens to those songs while he's working. I started doing it a few months ago (and then stopped for no apparent reason) and found it an interesting idea. I suspect when music gets really familiar that it becomes attentionally transparent.

...and that the biggest effect of music is whether or not it means that you're studying vs. doing something else.

It's fascinating to me that UM students prefer to study in public places. I think in my (our?) era that dorm rooms were less distracting places to study, but now it seems that the social constraints of being in public is less distracting than being in one's own room. I assume that's true at U Va as well as here.

Dylan Smith
10/7/2018 12:54:20 pm

A personal response... Kevin, your comment is tremendously resonating. For academic reading or writing, I need to leave my home office and head out to find a busy, bustling place, like a coffee shop... the ambient noise is somehow helpful, and piped in music only somewhat distracting. On the other hand, when I am synthesizing or otherwise working/studying with multiple research resources, I strongly prefer to be in a quiet university library. In any of these public locations, numbers of others can be seen with their ear buds in, and I've always assumed the music they are listening to must be personal-and-familiar music that remains in the background, 'attentionally transparent,' as you say.

Another phenomenological aside: The only time I intentionally make use of a personal playlist to support 'learning' is in the Spring when I dust off my golf clubs and try to dredge up forgotten swing keys. A serious golfer, I have about a dozen swings keys, and 3 or 4 of them will only re-emerge to consciousness with hard work. A prejudice I developed over the years is that a well-defined set of songs with history can be helpful, in a deep 'encoding specificity' manner. And whereas I see other people doing different things, my golf songs can only be played before and after -- never during -- practice sessions. :)

Kevin Miller
10/7/2018 05:06:12 pm

Very interesting, Dylan - I'm not a memory researcher, but I've always felt that some cue can load/activate a whole page or network of information. If I go to a conference I don't go to often, the first few people I meet seem to reinstate the whole set of people I only see at that conference, and I can see how the same thing could happen with the songs and the golf swings.

Daniel Willingham
10/8/2018 06:50:25 am

Kevin & Dylan...environmental context effects are definitely a thing--Steve Smith is the best-known researcher on this topic & has been showing this for years. But the effects aren't huge. I know a guy who got a DARPA grant to work on this...he did immersive VR, w/ sounds/sights & even smells (e.g., of a forest) and he got no effects on immersive environment on memory.

Dylan Smith
10/8/2018 10:37:44 am

Daniel, thank you for responding! Your blog is wonderful. I am unfamiliar with research lines on immersive visuo-spatial environments. But I would like to remain open to the broad idea that people operating autonomously in natural environments are likely to vary in the degree they have learned to lean on particular context qualia to cue episodic recall… Back to Rose, epigenetic variability, individual diffs.


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