These days music is often sound floating in the background rather than a focus. There’s a playlist for everything: cooking, meditation, running outdoors, running indoors, even ironing.
Among the most popular are those for studying and concentration. But what music is best for harnessing the focus to learn and absorb new information?
Along with mixed playlists, genres such as lo-fi are coming into their own via popular YouTube channels such as Lofi girl, with the express purpose of facilitating calm and concentration for activities like study.
While we’ve seen that longer-term exposure to music education can bring about general enhancements in students’ literacy and numeracy skills, can music actually help when it comes to study and concentration?
Mozart won’t make you smarter
During the 1990s a study claimed that after ten minutes of listening to Mozart’s Sonata for two pianos in D Major, K448, participants’ spatial reasoning skills improved significantly. This improvement lasted a maximum of 15 minutes after listening.
Dubbed the “Mozart Effect”, there rose a popular belief that listening to Mozart could make you smarter. Failures to consistently replicate the study results proved the Mozart Effect a potential misnomer, however, and the study authors themselves emphasised that their outcomes applied only to spatial IQ.
Nonetheless, it’s exactly these kinds of in-the-moment benefits that some people are aiming for with their study and listening practices.
Dr Steffen Herff, Sydney Horizon Fellow and Leader of the Sydney Music, Mind, and Body Lab says the current science shows mixed results.
There’s evidence that calming background music can improve arithmetic and memory task performance, but “there are studies showing no, or even disruptive effects of background music on learning.”
A recent meta-analysis of published studies concluded that overall, background music can support learning.
“The evidence is particularly strong when it comes to factual or procedural learning, but less so for conceptual learning,” says Dr Herff.
Basically this means that music might be good for tasks like data entry or memorising dates from your history textbook, but less helpful for something like creative writing.
Tim Stevens is an improvising pianist with kids who’ve been through the rigours of the final years of schooling.
They’re encouraged to engage with music and though he doesn’t hear all of them using it to study, it’s routinely on around the house.
“I use it all the time when I’m working and it’s mostly classical but sometimes improvised. Cooking or hanging up laundry with a record on is normal.”
The science of music and concentration
The general consensus in the scientific community is that more research is necessary to fully understand music’s potential for aiding study.
One group of researchers has narrowed it down to five existing theories.
According to one theory, music might benefit extroverts, but not introverts, due to introverts’ innately higher levels of arousal.
Another states that everyone’s cognitive capacity has its own limit. For example, listening to music with lyrics while studying the same language could overload the brain so you don’t retain as much of what you learned.
Two more theories revolve around distraction. If a simple task isn’t using up enough of the brain’s resources, listening to music might help keep you focused.
Similarly, certain simpler tasks might be easy to complete with background music, but it might interfere in completing more complex cognitive tasks.
There’s also music’s impact on mood. Music people enjoy listening to can boost performance, while the opposite would have a negative effect. There’s a limit to how stimulating the enjoyable music can be though, before it has a negative effect on performance.
How different people use music to concentrate
These researchers conducted a survey of 140 people aged 17 to 75 years old, to determine what influenced their music listening choices when performing cognitive tasks like reading, writing, memorising and critical thinking.
Their reasons for listening to music while completing these tasks ranged from “music helps my concentration”, “music boosts my mood” to “it’s my habit to have music on”.
The overwhelming reason for not listening to music was “music distracts my concentration”.
Instrumental music was the most popular choice across all four of the task categories, followed by calm and classical music, jazz, pop, upbeat and then vocal music.
There was a definite correlation between increasing difficulty of task and switching the music off.
Older participants reported listening to music less often in general when performing the tasks.
Although music proficiency wasn’t shown in the study to have any impact on listening habits, Dr Herff confirms that this is not always the case.
“For individuals with great music theoretical knowledge, they are so highly trained to listen and analyse music that playing music during any other task will always be disruptive.”
A professionally-trained musician, Stevens concurs.
“For me the music tends to take centre stage. I’d love to say ‘it can make me more focused’ but that’s not the case.”
Creating the perfect study playlist just for you
There’s no perfect formula for a study playlist. Knowing your own likes and capacities might just be the best way to tell if music might help you study.
The science has a few suggestions.
If the idea of preparing for a test stresses you out, try music that helps you feel calm.
On the other hand, an upbeat playlist could help boost motivation, and if you’re feeling a bit flat, your favourite tunes could help lift your mood.
For those prepping for a written language exam, you should avoid music with lyrics in the same language.
And if the topic is your absolute study nemesis, you might just need silence.
“Each individual has to discover for themselves what music works for them for a specific type of task, and I encourage everyone to go on this journey of self-discovery, it can be quite rewarding,” says Dr Herff.