Music? Don’t turn on if you want to tune in

LISTENING to classical music does not help students to work, a research project has revealed.

Despite a widely held view that background music can aid creativity, the findings suggest no kind of tune is helpful when trying to concentrate.

Psychologists at Lancaster University asked study subjects to complete verbal tasks while listening to either instrumental music, songs with foreign lyrics or songs with familiar lyrics. They were shown three words and asked to find a word that can form new words with all three of them.

Instrumental music was found to be most disruptive, lowering the test performance by 10 per cent.

Music with foreign lyrics decreased scores by seven per cent and songs with familiar lyrics by four per cent.

Dr Neil Mclatchie, of Lancaster University, said: “We found strong evidence of impaired performance when playing background music in comparison to quiet background conditions.” The researchers believe the effect on the students’ performance may be produced because music disrupts verbal working memory.

“The findings challenge the popular view that music enhances creativity, and instead demonstrate that music, regardless of the presence of semantic content (no lyrics, familiar lyrics or unfamiliar lyrics), consistently disrupts creative performance in insight problem solving,” said Dr Mclatchie.

The research was published in the journal Applied Cognitive Psychology.