Applied Cognitive Psychology, Appl. Cognit. Psychol.

28: 279–284 (2014)

Published online 6 January 2014 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/acp.2994

Does listening to preferred music improve reading comprehension performance?

NICK PERHAM* and HARRIET CURRIE

Department of Applied Psychology, Cardiff Metropolitan University, Cardiff, UK

Martin, Wogalter and Forlano (1988) showed that reading performance is poorer when the sound contains an auditory
comprehension was impaired when concurrent lyrical music sequence like ‘n, r, p…’ compared with when it contains
was played. However, this seems to contradict the music and ‘c, c, c…’. Two key features need to be present for the ISE
cognition literature, which proposes that listening to music to occur. Firstly, as mentioned, the sound must contain chang-
that one likes increases cognitive performance (Hallam, ing-state information, and secondly, the task must involve
Price, & Katsarou, 2002; Särkämö et al., 2008; Thompson, seriation. That is, the task must require participants to use
Schellenberg, & Husain, 2001; Wallace, 1994). In the rehearsal as a means to retain and retrieve order and/or item
current study we asked participants to undertake a reading information (see Jones, 1999, for a review).
comprehension task in the presence of the following sound Explanations of the ISE can be roughly divided into two
conditions: quiet, liked lyrical music, disliked lyrical music types (Jones & Tremblay, 2000). Firstly, there are those that
and instrumental music. propose that the impairment is because of the identity of the
So ubiquitous is music in everyday life that both work and items in the task becoming confused with the identity of the
non-work activities are often accompanied by it. The famous items in the irrelevant sound (Baddeley, 1986; Neath, 2000)
quote by William Green that ‘music is a friend of labour for or that the sound attracts the participant’s attention, thus
it lightens the task by refreshing the nerves and spirit of the reducing available resources to perform the task (Cowan,
worker’ forms the basis of commonly-held intuitions that 1995; Neath, 2000). However, these are refuted by evi-
have been supported by scientific studies. The most famous dence showing that non-speech sounds also impair perfor-
example of this is the so-called ‘Mozart effect’ in which mance (Jones & Macken, 1993) and that the sound only
spatial IQ was observed to increase following the listening impairs performance when the task involves seriation (tasks
of a passage of Mozart’s Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major such as missing item and category recall do not show
(K.488) for ten minutes in comparison with listening to a impairment: Beaman & Jones, 1997; Perham, Banbury, &
relaxation tape or sitting in silence (Rauscher, Shaw, & Ky, Jones, 2007).
1993). Subsequent studies have revealed this phenomenon Interestingly, one of the characteristics of the ISE is that it
not to be caused the music of Mozart or other classical does not matter what the content of the irrelevant sound is so
composers but by an increase in arousal and mood because long as it contains changing-state information. So, perfor-
of listening to preferred music (Nantais & Schellenberg, mance is equally as poor if the sound is in a language the
1999; Perham & Withey, 2012; Schellenberg & Hallam, participant understands or a language with which they have
2005). Music also benefits individuals in other ways such as no familiarity (Jones, Miles, & Page, 1990). Further, there
increasing older adults’ working memory performance be- is no greater impairment if there is a relationship between
cause of listening to an excerpt of Vivaldi’s ‘Four Seasons’ the items in the recall task and the content of the irrelevant
(Mammarella, Fairfield, & Cornoldi, 2007), autobiographical sound (Jones & Macken, 1995). Thus, recalling a list of
memory increases in Alzheimer’s patients following listening consonants is equally as impaired if the irrelevant sound
to Vivaldi’s ‘Spring Movement’ (Irish et al., 2006) and cancer contains consonants or digits. However, there are circum-
patients’ mood improved from listening to music (Cassileth, stances in which the semantic content of the irrelevant sound
Vickers, & Magill, 2003). plays a major role in determining impairment, and this is
Music, however, can impair performance, for example, as where the task involves semantic processing. Both Martin
when used as irrelevant sound in the irrelevant sound effect et al. (1988) and Marsh, Hughes and Jones (2008, 2009) re-
(ISE) paradigm. The ISE is one of the most commonly vealed that when the task required processing semantic infor-
researched auditory distraction phenomena. Put simply, this mation (by reading comprehension in the former study and
robust effect is the poorer performance in a background recalling list items according to their respective categories
sound condition compared with a quiet control condition. in the latter studies), then performance was poorer when
Typically, the paradigm uses serial recall (the recall, in the irrelevant sound also contained semantic information
presentation order, of a list of 7–9 digits or consonants) and (e.g. lyrical music and English words) compared with when
participants are told to ignore any sounds that they may hear. it did not (e.g. non-lyrical music, reversed speech and quiet).
The classic finding is that recall is significantly poorer when Many studies have explored concurrent music’s effects on
the sound contains what is termed changing-state information task performance and there have been a wide variety of
compared with steady-state sound and quiet. As an example, populations and tasks used. For example, introverts, com-
pared with extraverts, tend to be impaired on tasks accompa-
nied by background music (Dobbs, Furnham, & McClelland,
*Correspondence to: Nick Perham, Department of Applied Psychology,
Cardiff Metropolitan University, Cardiff, Cardiff CF5 2YB, UK. 2010; Furnham, Trew, & Sneade, 1999) and slow-tempo
E-mail: nperham@cardiffmet.ac.uk music elicits better recall of radio advertisements (Oakes &

Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

280 N. Perham and H. Currie

North, 2006). Unfortunately these studies either focus on MATERIALS

factors that are irrelevant to the current study (e.g. personal-
ity type or acoustical properties such as timbre) or do not use Task
reading comprehension as the main task. Although Dobbs
For the reading comprehension task, four passages (‘Silent film
et al. (2010) used three tasks—Ravens Progressive Matrices,
industry’, ‘Diversity of life’, ‘Values and integrity of jour-
The Wonderlic Personnel Test and a verbal reasoning test
nalism’, and ‘Emergence of genetics’), along with their
compiled from Bryon (2006)—only the latter two included
accompanying six questions, were taken from the ‘10 Real
any items that were similar to the reading comprehension
SATs’ (The College Board, 2000). SAT tests measure aca-
task used in the current study. However, even then, they only
demic progress and allow school teachers to have an under-
comprised a small proportion, hence any relevance between
standing of the level reached by their student. They test
this and the current study is negligible.
critical thinking and problem solving and have been used
So, the findings by Marsh et al. and Martin et al. seem to
in similar studies (e.g. Perham et al., 2005). Each passage
contradict those in the music and cognition literature
was approximately the same length (70 lines) and the re-
reporting that listening to liked music improves cognitive
sponses were in a multiple choice format with a possible
performance. Thus, the current study sought to explore this
four answers each. Both passages and multiple choice an-
discrepancy by asking participants to perform reading com-
swers were printed onto A4 paper.
prehension tasks under the following sound conditions:
quiet, liked lyrical music, disliked lyrical music and non-
lyrical music. If the performance is poorest in the liked and Sounds
disliked music compared with the non-lyrical music and Participants provided the liked music from their own music
quiet, then it would be consistent with the semantic collection. The requirements were that it contained lyrics
auditory distraction literature (Marsh et al., 2008. Marsh and songs were repeated so that they lasted the length of
et al., 2009: Martin et al., 1988: Perham, Banbury, & Jones, the task condition (10 min). Chosen songs were from artists
2005). In contrast, the music and cognition literature pre- such as One Direction, Frank Ocean and Katy Perry.
dicts that the liked music should be better for performance As with Perham and Vizard (2010) and Perham and
than both the disliked and non-lyrical music (as it would Sykora (2012), the DLYR and NLYR were chosen by the
be unfamiliar and less likeable, Ali & Peynircioğlu, researchers and the genre was heavy/thrash metal. Death
2010). As such, the current study builds upon Perham and Angel’s ‘Seemingly Endless Time’ was used for the DM song
Vizard’s (2010) study by exploring the impact of music and Death Angel’s ‘The Ultra Violence’ was used for the
preference on task performance by examining these effects NLYR song. Death Angelis a thrash metal band who released
on semantic processing. their debut album ‘The Ultra Violence’ in 1987 and they are
still releasing critically acclaimed albums and touring.
Given that the DLYR was not chosen by the participants, it
METHOD was unlikely to be familiar to them (Ali & Peynircioğlu, 2010).
This lack of familiarity, coupled with thrash metal music’s of-
Participants ten inaudible lyrics, meant that the semantic content of the
lyrics—which was necessary to explore the semantic effect un-
Thirty undergraduate students from a South Wales University
der investigation—may not have been processed. To ensure
participated for course credit. Ages ranged from 19 to 65 years,
that the semantic content of the DLYR music was comprehen-
and there was an approximate 50 : 50 ratio of males and
sible, a pilot study was conducted in which 10 participants
females. All participants reported good vision and hearing
listened to Death Angel’s ‘Seemingly Endless Time’ and
and were native English speakers. Prior to participation, all
attempted to identify the lyrics. It was found that participants
participants were asked whether they liked thrash metal music
were able to understand around 75% of the lyrics, and this
as this genre of music was chosen for the disliked music con-
was deemed a suitable amount for the song to be used in the
dition (Materials). Those who did were respectfully declined
experiment proper. However, one must consider that in the
the opportunity to participate in the study.
actual study, participants are explicitly told not to attend to
the irrelevant sound so it would be unlikely that semantic com-
prehension of the lyrical content of the song would be that
DESIGN high.
All music was listened to via headphones, was played at
A within design was adopted with one independent between 65–75 dB(A) and presented via the participant’s
variable of sound [comprising the four levels of disliked music player or YouTube on the personal computer.
lyrical music (DLYR), liked lyrical music (LLYR), non-
lyrical music (NLYR) and quiet (Q)] and the dependent
Ratings questionnaire
variable of reading comprehension score (ranging from
0–6). The sound conditions for the first 24 participants A short questionnaire was administered to participants upon
were fully counterbalanced and for the final six partici- completion based on that used in Perham and Sykora (2012).
pants, each one was allocated an ordering whereby each The questionnaire comprised Likert scale questions (ranging
sound condition appeared in each position an equal num- from 0–100, with 0 being the lowest and 100 being the
ber of times. highest) that asked participants to rate how likeable, familiar

Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Appl. Cognit. Psychol. 28: 279–284 (2014)
 Preferred music and reading comprehension 281

and distracting each sound condition as well as how well Questionnaire ratings
they thought they performed in each sound condition.
Table 1 shows that participants perceived themselves to have
performed best in the LLYR, the quiet and NLYR conditions
Procedure as well as feeling that they were the most familiar conditions
Participants took part individually, or in pairs, in a small lab- to them. However, they felt that the LLYR and DLYR con-
oratory. A standardised instruction sheet informed them that ditions were most distracting to their performance, with quiet
they would read four passages of text and then answer six being much less distracting and NLYR in between LLYR/
multiple choice questions on each one. Whilst doing so, they DLYR and quiet.
might hear music through the headphones they would be One-way within ANOVAs showed significantly effects of
wearing but this was to be ignored as it would not be tested. sound on all ratings: likeability (F(2.29, 66.30) = 54.12,
Although there was no time limit, participants tended to MSE = 43338.2, η2 = 0.65, p < 0.001), familiarity (F(2.1,
complete each passage of text within 10–15 min during 60.95) = 82.82, MSE = 70565.53, η2 = 0.74, p < 0.001), and
which time the researcher restarted the music (in the music distractability (F(3, 87) = 47.31, MSE = 30144.28, η2 = 0.62,
conditions). Following completion of all the passages of text, p < 0.001).
participants completed the questionnaire and were then With regard to likeability, planned contrasts revealed that
thanked for their participation. the LLYR condition was thought of as significantly more
likeable than the DLYR and NLYR conditions, but there
was no difference between the LLYR and quiet conditions
RESULTS
and the NLYR and DLYR conditions. Planned contrasts on
the familiarity question revealed that LLYR was signifi-
Data were collected and analysed for reading comprehension
cantly more familiar than all the other conditions and quiet
and the questionnaire ratings and are reported in that order.
was significantly more familiar than NLYR and DLYR.
Finally, quiet was perceived to be significantly less
Reading comprehension performance distracting than the other conditions and NLYR was signifi-
As Figure 1 shows, performance was greatest for the quiet and cantly less distracting than DLYR and LLYR. Both DLYR
NLM conditions and poorest for the two lyrical music condi- and LLYR were perceived to be equally as distracting as
tions (DLYR and LLYR). A one-way within the analysis of each other (all p < 0.001).
variance (ANOVA) revealed a significant main effect of
sound, F(3, 87) = 8.05, MSE = 0.47, η2 = 0.22, p < 0.05. Subjective performance
Planned contrasts showed that performance in quiet was signif-
Table 1 shows that participants thought they performed best in
icantly better than in the DLYR condition (F(1, 29) = 16.96,
the quiet condition followed by NLYR, LLYR and DLYR. A
MSE = 1.71, η2 = 0.37, p < 0.001) and the LM condition
one-way within ANOVA revealed a significant main effect of
(F(1, 29) = 10.43, MSE = 1.79, η2 = .26, p < .05). No signifi-
sound on participants’ subjective estimation of how well they
cant differences were observed between quiet and NLYR,
performed on the task (F(3, 87) = 29.4, MSE = 6985.36,
and between DLYR and LLYR (all p > 0.05).
η2 = 0.5, p < 0.001). Bonferroni post-hocs revealed that partic-
ipants thought that they performed significantly better in the
0.7 quiet condition compared to NLYR (p < 0.05), DLYR
0.6 (p < 0.001) and LLYR (p < 0.001) and significantly better in
the NLYR condition compared with the DLYR (p < 0.05)
Proportion correct

0.5
and LLYR (p < 0.001) conditions. No difference was obser-
0.4 ved between the DLYR and LLYR conditions.
0.3

0.2 DISCUSSION
0.1
Despite much research reporting that listening to music that
0 one likes confers better health benefits (Cassileth et al.,
Disliked lyrics No lyrics Liked lyrics Quiet
2003; Rickard, Toukhsati, & Field, 2005; Siedlecki & Good,
Sound condition
2006) and increases spatial awareness when listened to prior
Figure 1. Mean proportion correct recall by sound condition to task performance (see Schellenberg, 2005, for a review),
(standard error represented in error bars) the current study reveals that it is equally as disruptive as

Table 1. Ratings of likeability, familiarity and distractability and subjective estimates of performance by sound conditions
Disliked music Liked music Non-lyrical music Quiet

Likeability 20.17 (27.49) 83.17 (26.38) 29.93 (18.67) 81 (20.49)

Familiarity 12.83 (23.77) 88.33 (23.61) 7.5 (8.48) 70 (31.18)
Distracting 78.7 (23.12) 75.33 (25.32) 46.4 (28.11) 10.43 (22.51)
Subjective estimate 35.77 (21.92) 35.67 (21.76) 52.8 (18.51) 67.33 (19.51)

Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Appl. Cognit. Psychol. 28: 279–284 (2014)
282 N. Perham and H. Currie

disliked music when listened to at the same time as performing Given our ability to use our imagination and specifically with
reading comprehension: both liked (LLYR) and disliked lyrics (Halpern & Zatorre, 1999; Kraemer, Macrae, Green, &
(DLYR) music conditions were equally as disruptive as each Kelley, 2005), it is possible that imagining lyrical music may
other and were both significantly worse than non-lyrical music have the same effect. Recently, we have shown that when mu-
(NLYR) and quiet (NLYR and quiet produced the same levels sicians imagine a favourite song they can produce the mood
of performance). These findings are not consistent with the and arousal effect—the increase in spatial rotation perfor-
music and cognition literature and instead concur with the re- mance which was previously, incorrectly, called the ‘Mozart
search on semantic auditory distraction. effect’ (Perham, Lewis, Turner & Hodgetts, 2013).
Many people read whilst having music playing in the Although other accounts of the ISE may be used to
background and it is often assumed that this may benefit explain our findings, we feel that they are insufficient. The
their understanding of the text. This may be, in part, attentional capture model proposes that performance is
influenced by prominently reported research showing that impaired by virtue of irrelevant sound capturing attention
listening to music can improve performance (e.g. Rauscher and thus diverting attention from the task at hand (Cowan,
et al., 1993; Schellenberg, 2005). However, in these situa- 1995). On this account, liked music, which is likely to be
tions, the music is listened to prior to engaging in the spatial more familiar and consequently less likely to violate partici-
awareness task. The situation of concurrently reading and pants’ expectations of the song because of their long-term
having music playing in the background is analogous to representation of the lyrics and melody (Ali & Peynircioğlu,
the ISE and its related research areas (e.g. Marsh et al., 2010; Hughes, Vachon, & Jones, 2005), should capture
2008; Perham, Hodgetts & Banbury, 2013). A recent expla- attention more than disliked music, which is likely to be
nation of these auditory distraction phenomena posits that more unfamiliar.
the impairment by the background sound is because of a Both the working memory and feature models predict that
conflict of processing. Marsh et al. (2009) showed that par- performance is impaired because of the similarity of items/
ticipants engaging in category recall (recalling a list of items features present in task and the irrelevant sound (Baddeley,
according to the semantic categories they belong to) were 1986; Neath, 2000). However, these models are usually ap-
impaired when the background sound contained semantic plied to recall tasks where the relationship between the items
information. In the case of reading comprehension and recalled in the task and those present in the irrelevant sound
category recall, the conflict in processing arises because of is clear and precise. With regard to reading comprehension,
participants semantically processing information in the task it is unclear what could comprise this relationship—the
and in the background sound. The semantic information in semantic content of the passage of test and items in the irrel-
the reading comprehension task and the lyrics in the music evant sound, the semantic content of the questions and items
both provide plausible candidates for selection to be repre- in the irrelevant sound or the semantic content of the partic-
sented and processed when understanding the information ipants’ response and items in the irrelevant sound? This
in the task. In order to prevent plausible but inappropriate in- ambiguity renders this explanation defunct at this time.
formation—the lyrics in the music—from being selected at Further, these models have been criticised for being unable
the expense of the information in the text, the cognitive sys- to explain how non-speech sounds, which share no items
tem inhibits information from the music. Unfortunately, this or features with any in the task, impair performance (Jones
comes at a cost, which is the loss of efficient processing of & Macken, 1995). Further, these explanations do not take
the semantic content of the text. into account the interaction between the task and the sound.
As predicted, the DLYR music condition was equally as That is, the processing that is involved in the task is funda-
disruptive as the LLYR music condition. This suggests that mental to whether it is impaired by irrelevant sound. For
the semantic content of the DLYR music was understood example, Marsh et al. (2009) demonstrated that impairment
enough to impair reading comprehension and is comparable from semantic irrelevant sound only occurred when recall
with Experiment 2 of Martin et al. (1988) in which the liked of a list of categorisable items were recalled semantically
music for all participants—likely to have been the re- (in categories) rather than in serial order.
searchers’ choice—was ‘You Light Up My Life’ by Joe With regard to participants’ ratings of the sounds, they
Brooks. We know from our pilot study that around 75% of liked and found more familiar the quiet and liked music con-
the lyrical content was understood when participants ditions compared with the disliked and non-lyrical music
attended to this music but it is impossible to know how much conditions, yet found the liked and disliked music conditions
was understood by participants in the actual study when they (both contained lyrics) more distracting than the non-lyrical
were focusing on the serial recall task. This does raise the music and quiet conditions. Interestingly, their perceptions
question of how much semantic processing is required for of their own performance were quite accurate in that they
impairment to occur. This could be tested by having varying correctly assumed that performance was best in quiet
degrees of semantic content in the irrelevant sound but it followed by non-lyrical music but they also correctly as-
may be that once semantic processing has been activated, sumed that performance was equally as poor in the liked
then it persists for a while without any stimuli being present. and disliked music conditions. This accuracy is in contrast
Indeed, one might also ask whether the music has to be pres- with Perham and Sykora (2012) who observed that partici-
ent to exert its effect on semantic processing. Music is ubiq- pants were inaccurate in perceiving their performance to be
uitous in many of our daily activities, and this often results in roughly equivalent in each of the music conditions when
earworms where songs get ‘stuck in our heads’ long after we liked music exhibited more impairment than disliked music.
have heard them (Beaman & Williams, 2010; in press). This discrepancy is also well-noted in other areas of auditory

Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Appl. Cognit. Psychol. 28: 279–284 (2014)
 Preferred music and reading comprehension 283

distraction (Beaman, 2005). One reason for this apparent Furnham, A., Trew, S., & Sneade, I. (1999). The distracting effects of vocal
difference may be that in the current study, the difference and instrumental music on the cognitive test performance of introverts
and extraverts. Personality and Individual Differences, 27, 381–392.
between ‘poor’ and ‘good’ performance matched whether Hallam, S., Price, J., & Katsarou, G. (2002). The effects of background mu-
lyrics were present or not, respectively, which was quite sic on primary school pupils’ task performance. Educational Studies, 28,
obvious to participants. However, in the Perham and Sykora 111–122.
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head: A PET investigation of auditory imagery for familiar melodies.
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Cerebral Cortex, 9(7), 697–704.
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The current study augments recent research into music during serial recall: Violations at encoding of an algorithm-based neural
and cognition, and semantic auditory distraction. With re- model? Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and
gard to the former, it reveals that music does not always Cognition, 31(4), 736–749.
Irish, M., Cunningham, C. J., Walsh, J. B., Coakley, D., Lawlor, B. A.,
aid cognitive performance (Perham & Sykora, 2012; Perham
Robertson, I. H., & Coen, R. F. (2006). Investigating the enhancing effect
& Vizard, 2010). More specifically, when music is played in of music on autobiographical memory in mild Alzheimer’s disease. Demen-
the background when people are performing tasks that re- tia and Geriatric Cognitive Disorders, 22(1), 108–120. doi: 10.1159/
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(1997) BPS Broadbent lecture. British Journal of Psychology, 90, 167–187.
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Jones, D. M., & Macken, W. J. (1993). Irrelevant tones produce an irrele-
iation or no lyrics can reduce this impairment, however. vant speech effect: implications for phonological coding in working
With regard to semantic auditory distraction, the current memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and
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disliked lyrical music (see Perham & Sykora, 2012, and reply to Neath (2000). Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 7, 550–558.
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Kraemer, D. J. M., Macrae, C. N., Green, A. E., & Kelley, W. M. (2005).
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Marsh, J. E., Hughes, R. W., & Jones, D. M., (2008). Auditory distraction in
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