Effects of Different Types of Music on Students’ Study Efficiency

Abstract

Music has been omnipresent in people’s daily lives; therefore, it is crucial to evaluate how it exerts influence as people depend more on it. Many studies suggest that listening to background music has a positive impact and raises study efficiency, while others suggest that it is counterproductive because it negatively impacts attention levels. These equivocal results occur because people focus on different tasks while testing the effect of background music. This paper explores various effects on students’ study efficiency of three genres of background music, classical music, white noise or environmental sounds, and lyrical pop music. Classical music had both beneficial and harmful impacts depending on different cognitive tasks. White noise, surprisingly, has some positive impact on students, especially for ADHD students. Lyrical music has a generally distracting effect on study tasks. Certainly, more research about how three types of music impact students is needed. Since music has become more and more entrenched in people’s life, this paper hopes to provide insight into how three types of music can be incorporated into tasks that helps performance and avoid using those that might hurt students’ performance.