Impact of background music on reading comprehension: influence of lyrics language and study habits
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View abstract on PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.Background music with lyrics negatively impacts reading comprehension for college students. Listening habits matter: those who regularly listen to music while reading are less affected by lyrical distractions.
Area Of Science
- Cognitive Psychology
- Educational Psychology
- Applied Linguistics
Background
- Existing research on background music and reading comprehension is extensive.
- However, the specific impact of native language (L1) versus second language (L2) lyrics on reading comprehension remains under-explored, particularly for college students.
Purpose Of The Study
- To investigate how listening habits and music type (L1 pop, L2 pop, no music) affect reading comprehension in both L1 and L2 texts among East China college students.
- To examine the influence of lyrical content in background music on reading comprehension performance.
Main Methods
- A mixed experimental design was employed with 90 college students (45 listeners, 45 non-listeners of music while reading).
- Participants were randomly assigned to one of three groups: L1 (Mandarin) pop music, L2 (English) pop music, or no music.
- Reading comprehension was assessed for both L1 (Chinese) and L2 (English) texts.
Main Results
- Music with lyrics significantly impaired reading comprehension compared to silence.
- Reading comprehension was more negatively impacted when the pop music's language matched the text's language.
- Non-listeners experienced greater negative effects from music with lyrics than listeners.
- Reading comprehension accuracy was lowest when participants listened to music with native language lyrics.
Conclusions
- Listening to pop music with lyrics generally reduces reading comprehension performance.
- The distracting effect of background music is lessened for individuals who habitually listen to music while reading.
- Findings support the duplex-mechanism account of auditory distraction in cognitive tasks.
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