Listening to music when studying or doing work is a very common habit among university students In libraries, many people choose to ignore that fragile and artificial silence that surrounds the tables and shelves, isolating themselves from the outside by using headphones and a pleasant melody.
The same thing happens in some offices, although in that context isolating yourself from others is more problematic if you work in a team or in a large office with open cubicles. Whether or not there is insulation, however, The common factor among these people is that they see music as a tool that can improve concentration productivity and task completion in general.
But… is this true? Does music really help us concentrate better on what we are doing, whether it is memorizing a text, studying about complex topics or writing projects?
It has been many decades since scientific studies were carried out on this topic; among other things because if music can serve to improve the performance of students or workers, this information can be very useful for organizations capable of financing this type of studies.
In this way, for example, an investigation whose results were published in 1972 was designed to try to better understand the relationship between listening to melodies and changes in productivity Through a series of observations, an increase in workers’ performance was recorded when they listened to music coming to them from speakers.
However, this research was a product of its time, and was used to study only one very specific and representative work context of that time: that of factories. Workforce tasks were repetitive, predictable and boring, and music acted as a stimulant of mental activity. As work was more rewarding and enjoyable, the productivity results were also better.
Other research that came later served to reinforce the idea that music improves the performance of routine and monotonous tasks. This was good news, since a good part of the workforce was dedicated to assembling elements on assembly lines, but… What about the most complex and creative jobs?, those that cannot be done by machines? What about the study of complex university syllabi, which cannot be literally memorized but rather require being understood and worked on mentally?
When the task gets complicated, silence is better
It seems that when the task at hand requires us to really concentrate on what we are doing, the presence of music is a burden that we should avoid.
For example, in research published in Psychological Reports it was found that when a series of volunteers were asked to count backwards while listening to a piece of music of their choice, those who did it while the chosen piece was playing did significantly worse than those who had not been able to choose and simply carried out the task without listening to music.
Many other investigations go along this same line: the most catchy melodies or those that the person likes have devastating effects on performance when studying or performing moderately complex mental operations especially if the music has lyrics in a language that is understood.
That is to say, although music is used to study, this may be due simply because the music is liked, not because it improves results when it comes to memorizing and learning. You listen to these tunes despite the effects this has on performance, not because of their effectiveness in that context.
Why is it not good to listen to music when studying?
The answer lies in two concepts: multitasking and attentional focus. Multitasking is the ability to perform more than one task in parallel, and is closely related to working memory That type of memory that is responsible for keeping in our mind elements that we work with in real time. What happens is that this type of RAM memory in our brain is very limited, and it is believed that it can only be used to manipulate between 4 and 7 elements at the same time.
Attentional focus is the way in which the brain guides mental processes towards solving some problems and not others. When we concentrate on something we make a large part of our nervous system start working to solve it, but For this you have to pay the price of neglecting other functions
That is why, for example, if we are walking down the street reflecting on something, we often find ourselves detouring to continue walking along one of the routes we usually follow: going to work, going to the bus stop. bus etc.
But the problem with attentional focus is not only that it can only cover certain processes and not others. In addition, we must also keep in mind that we do not always have complete control over it, and it can deviate from what we should be doing very easily.
Music, in particular, is one of the great lures to which attention usually succumbs ; It is extremely easy for the attention focus to disengage from studying or performing complex mental operations to begin to enjoy the appreciation of the melody and the verses it contains.
motor memory
Therefore, for these more challenging tasks it is better not to disturb our attention focus by presenting it with a distracting temptation in the form of catchy music and understandable lyrics. But then… why is this effect not noticeable in monotonous tasks?
The answer is that a good part of the processes we carry out when carrying out routine tasks are managed by a part of our brain that meets its objectives without the attention focus having to intervene in it.
Specifically, motor memory, mediated by brain structures known as basal ganglia, is responsible for a good part of these sequences of automated actions. You just have to look at how people who have spent years fitting parts together on an assembly line work: they may work so fast that what they are doing seems very difficult, but in reality they don’t even concentrate much to do it.
The opposite happens with studies. If certain university courses are difficult, it is precisely because taking them involves constantly facing unforeseen problems, and these cannot be minimized by using a simple melody.
Conclusion: it depends on the type of content to be studied
The effect that music has on our ability to study varies depending on the complexity of the content we must learn
For the most mechanical and monotonous tasks, which are those in which we can always be guided by the same memorization system (for example, associating a name with each river located on a map), music can make us make greater progress, although this It will not occur in all cases and there are certain personal psychological characteristics that also influence, such as the ease with which each person manages their attention focus.
However, if music helps to study in these cases It’s not because we momentarily “dope” our intelligence or anything like that, but simply because it makes that activity more pleasant and we stay in it for longer, without looking for distractions outside.
However, for the most complicated tasks, in practically all cases listening to music is counterproductive and hinders the action of studying. This is because for this type of activities we need to take total control of our attentional focus, so that distractions do not reduce our ability to “mentally operate” on the contents that we must assimilate. Even if we don’t notice it, hear a melody
