Play music when doing something simple!

 Have you ever wondered how music affects what you’re doing? 

Kiss and Linnell shared some research on two sets of people who either sat in silence or listened to some music while they are focused on something.

To measure this: one group “completed a variation of the Psychomotor Vigilance Task—that has long been used to measure sustained attention—in silence and [the other group] with their self-selected or preferred music [to hear while working on a task that requires attention] in the background.

We collected subjective reports of attentional state (specifically mind-wandering, task-focus and external distraction states) as well as reaction time (RT) measures of performance. . . .

In summary, the current study demonstrated that preferred background music enhanced task-focus on a low-demanding [simpler] sustained-attention task by decreasing mind-wandering. . . .

Overall, these results provide evidence for a positive effect of background music on task-focused attention during an easy, low-demanding task.”

Luca Kiss and Karina Linnell.  2020.”The Effect of Preferred Background Music on Task-Focus in Sustained Attention.” Psychological Research, https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-020-01400-6