
The Impact of Listening to Music on Cognitive Performance (2013) - bcaulfield
http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1657/the-impact-of-listening-to-music-on-cognitive-performance
======
manicdee
As a music listener I will point out the obvious flaw in the study: the
“choice” of music was from pop genres. I find music with distinguishable
lyrics in a language I understand to be distracting while music with no
lyrics, or lyrics indistinguishable from noise (cf Rammstein, Björk, Enya) are
far less distracting.

I use music to mask open office noise including customer support personnel on
phone calls, ops people discussing equipment failures, and political trolls
discussing my preferred party.

Industrial, death metal, and recordings of rainfall all work just as well for
me. Though in the case of rainfall I find about twenty minutes of the same
sound is about my limit before I need more texture in my auditory diet.
Silence just makes my ears ring louder until after a few minutes it is
physically painful to not have some noise.

The issue of masking background conversations was not covered. I find that
wearing isolating earphones, earmuffs, etc only serves to strain me further
since I can still hear conversations but I have to listen harder to make out
the words.

Perhaps I have some undiagnosed anxiety or paranoia but for me,
isolation/silence does not work as well as masking.

~~~
swimfar
I agree regarding music without lyrics. But I never thought of including
incomprehensible lyrics in that group. Below is a selection of playlists that
I listen to often while working. There are occasional lyrics or talking, but
not too often. I also like that the music style has a bit of variation in it.

[http://musicforprogramming.net/](http://musicforprogramming.net/)

~~~
jackaroe78
These mixes are brilliant! Boards of Canada get in that same type of headspace

[https://youtu.be/ksWPFwHwlwY](https://youtu.be/ksWPFwHwlwY)

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wildrhythms
tl;dr: "participants performed better in silence than they did in any music
conditions"

Personally, I cannot listen to music and work... I get too caught up in trying
to follow the music. I end up just wearing my noise canceling headphones with
no music playing and working in relative silence.

That said, I'm interested to know if folks here on HN can relate.

~~~
nni
What about that ambient/"cognitive/aural beats" stuff on youtube? I've been
trying that lately and it seems nice. No data to see if better or not, but
definitely more relaxing.

I've also started just using earplugs which can also seem to be (subjectively)
effective.

~~~
aoeusnth1
Link?

~~~
nni
sorry -here's one I listened to yesterday

\- [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oh-
dcCeR-r4&t=6856s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oh-dcCeR-r4&t=6856s)

basically, I search for "cognitive enhancement music"\- sometimes the
"meditation" ones seem nice, too. I have an immediate relaxation response to
this stuff, and it's pleasant.

~~~
wildrhythms
Sorry, for me this just comes off as a hamfisted cliche of "calm". I'm
distracted by the constant modulations. Just not my thing, but it probably
works great as a constant drone against unwanted noise.

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mark-r
> Interestingly, this study revealed some evidence that overall background
> noise, such as television, music, and chatter could improve performance in
> complex cognitive tasks for extraverts, although it will significantly
> impair introverts’ performance (Furnham & Bradley, 1997).

Maybe this explains why open offices are so popular with higher-ups? They tend
to be extroverts, and if their own personal experience is that distracting
noise is positive... I've always wondered why the negative impact isn't
completely self-evident.

~~~
dboreham
Also cheaper which could explain popularity with higher ups.

~~~
mark-r
Cheaper shouldn't matter if it hurts productivity.

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qwerty456127
The problem with this paper is that it ignores ADHD. It can be very difficult
or impossible to maintain concentration for periods of time longer than some
minutes (or even seconds) for an ADHD person and certain kinds of music can
help mitigate this problem in some cases.

BTW amphetamine works alike AFAIK: it induces hyperactivity and harms
concentration in healthy people but calms ADHD people down and induces
concentration and clarity on them.

~~~
vanilla_nut
I've heard that claim about amphetamines before, and I've always doubted it. I
know many people who do not seem to have ADHD and who have never been
diagnosed who have taken adderall before. They all claim to have used it to
study for tests, work on huge projects, etc. with great success.

Besides, if amphetamines worked differently on the healthy/ADHD people,
wouldn't you just give someone a small dose of amphetamine if you wanted to
"test" them for ADHD? If they act calmer, they must have ADHD, if they get
hyperactive, they don't. Right?

Apologies if I"m misunderstanding; I'm just hoping to get to the bottom of a
claim that's always bothered me.

~~~
rwnspace
If you want a brilliant and lovely person to listen to about the facts of
ADHD, look up Dr Russell Barkley.

That factoid is a myth: the difference is that ADHD meds provide those with
ADHD the focus needed to function in modern society, and without it they do
not function. There's a theory to do with dopamine regulation and the COMT
gene which I don't claim to understand. A generalisation might be 'this gives
me dopamine in a pill, so I don't disrupt my environment/chase random thoughts
for my dopamine'.

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harlanji
I def prefer the quiet. Avid music fan, ears blown from 2 decades of
festivals, clubs, and chonic headphoning. Certain beats on the stereo are good
but I won't do headphones anymore. Final problem with headphones in office is
political, visually implies being closed with a good margin of false positives
and negatives.

I've no data, but my life programming with constant music started in offices
to cope and I think I am better without the blaring noise. I've made other
substantial changes that I think made desire for loud noises generally be
negated. I think I am way more sharp now, similar to 17yo self before
headphone coping began

~~~
marmaduke
Last year I started with the headphones at work to block out the noise, but I
got a lot of pushback about being “unavailable”. Amazingly on a team using
Slack, where I usually respond instantly.

I’d expect though, that when your brain has to maintain focus actively (w/o
headphones) it does a better job overall, than with, and it forces you to
prioritize for tasks which are worth focusing on.

------
dang
Discussed a bit in 2014:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8686072](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8686072)

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lsc
"In agreement with the first hypothesis, performance scores were significantly
higher in silence (M= 12.94) than in all four music conditions, intensity
levels, and types of music combined"

For those comparing this to work performance, where do you work that "silence"
is an option, and are you hiring?

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camgunz
Yeah I've noticed a big difference in genre too.

I find that I have three main modes:

\- I have control over my environment and don't need/want to listen to music
or noise

\- Creatively I need stimulation, so I listen to sonically interesting music
with no lyrics (that I can understand).

\- I want to get work done as efficiently as possible but there are too many
aural distractions, so I listen to rain.

I do think that I perform the best when not listening to anything, but over
time I need to use other parts of my brain so it's nice to do like, idk 80%
coding efficiency while getting a "this is an interesting song" fix.

Big fan of video game soundtracks. Thunder Force IV ;)

------
pixelperfect
I have listened to rainymood.com over 1000 hours and am 100% sure I perform
better while listening to it vs. not listening to anything. However, pop music
would be much more distracting than silence for me.

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zitterbewegung
I use my earbuds to calm down sometimes but then after one song I stop the
music and then I have silence.

I have started to just use earplugs but the cheap ones I have have less
isolation than my earbuds so I generally use those.

Turning off the phone is a great way to not only accomplish the above but also
to reduce distractions . Or just invest in good earplugs .

Headphones that do noise cancellation for some reason irritate me more than
natural isolation (I guess that might be the fact that there is sound there I
just can’t hear it?).

Or if you are lucky find a quiet room and use that.

~~~
clumsysmurf
Its important to find earplugs that fit correctly. My favorites are Howard
Leight Max, and many come in different sizes (regular or small).

[http://www.howardleight.com/ear-
protection/earplugs](http://www.howardleight.com/ear-protection/earplugs)

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neutrinoq
As a counterpoint to this, here's an article citing multiple peer reviewed
studies that says largely the opposite, that certain types of music can be
quite beneficial to cognitive performance: [https://blog.pzizz.com/how-music-
can-help-you-focus-and-get-...](https://blog.pzizz.com/how-music-can-help-you-
focus-and-get-work-done-3ff97deab93d)

------
meej
I have been listening to the AI-generated music at Brain.fm for about a month
now. The focus mode really does seem to help. (I also like the sleep mode, but
I need better headphones to wear to bed.)

Before I learned about Brain.fm, I was a fan of the isochronic tone generator
at mynoise.net, which I would combine with the "white rain" generator in their
iOS app.

------
ramses
There should also be a comparison of type of cognitive task vs type of music.

Once I have the solution to a problem in my head, I do great writing code
while listening to instrumental music with a lot of repetition (some
progressive electronic fits this, but it is not the only style).

Under no circumstances I can listen to music with lyrics while performing any
type of cognitive task.

------
wejick
I think there are several differences on the thought process between examp,
learning, programming or other creative processes. Say mathematical examp
would need more concentration than writing a poem, which should be has
different cognitive impact.

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hutch120
If people are trying to be machines then I guess it makes sense. I wonder what
they would discover if they considered enjoyment/flow/creativity as a factor.

------
virmundi
How about isotones or binaural beats? I've moved to those. They seem to help.
How about the rest of you? Any good?

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wearesystems
The big concern I have with students learning in a music enviroment is that
the information they store will not be recalled in the same way when they
can't listen to the same music, i.e. exams. I wonder how much state-dependent
memory is affected on recall.

