工作记忆中的个体差异预测音乐对学生表现的影响外文文献英文

Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition 6 2017 167 173 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition j ourna l h om epage Individual Differences in Working Memory Predict the Effect of Music on Student Performance Eddie A Christopher University of Tennessee at Chattanooga United States Purdue University United States Jill Talley Shelton University of Tennessee at Chattanooga United States Past research has demonstrated that music often negatively impacts performance on a variety of cognitive tasks including academically relevant tasks There are however discrepancies in the literature including a handful of instances where no effect of music was observed We tested the novel hypothesis that working memory capacity moderated the detrimental effect of music on academic performance Undergraduate students worked on reading comprehension and math tasks under both music and silence conditions before completing a battery of working memory capacity assessments Although music led to a signifi cant decline in performance overall working memory capacity moderated this effect in the reading comprehension tasks These fi ndings suggest that individuals who are better able to control their attention as indexed by working memory capacity may be protected from music related distraction when completing certain kinds of academically relevant tasks General Audience Summary Instructors of undergraduate psychology courses often inform their students of a fi nding that studying while listening to music hinders learning Thus the advice students often receive is that they ought not to attempt any sort of academic work while listening to music Many students however profess a distrust of such a fi nding and retain a belief that they in fact do better with music despite evidence to the contrary An important question then is whether the detrimental effect that music has on learning actually impacts everyone in the same way The present study examined whether individual differences in people s attention and memory abilities could predict the degree to which music impeded their performance of academic tasks Interestingly the higher an individual scored on the tasks measuring attention and memory abilities the less they were affected by music while they worked on reading comprehension questions However when solving math problems the detrimental effect of music was similar regardless of how individuals scored on the tasks measuring memory and attention Keywords Working memory capacity Music Auditory distraction Academic performance Many studies have demonstrated notable declines in perfor mance on academic tasks completed in the presence of music relative to a silence condition e g Anderson Henderson Crews Tucker Kantner 2009 Mayfi eld Woo Freeburne Judde Mowsesian Pool Koolstra Woo Doyle Freeburne Furnham Henderson et al 1945 Perham Pool et al 2003 Tucker Tucker Mowsesian Kane Bleckley Conway Woo MRC music reading comprehension SM silence math SRC silence reading comprehension O Span operation span Mod Lag modifi ed lag task LNS letter number sequencing Correlations 2 are signifi cant at p 05 listening habits and preferences while completing homework and studying Results Scoring WMC was treated as a continuous variable and was based on a composite score created from three separate measures of WMC Performance on each WMC task was standardized and then averaged together to create a measure of WMC This approach allowed for a measurement of the effect of individual differences in WMC across a continuous range of WMC scores The degree to which participants were accurate in predicting their perfor mance on a given task e g proportion correct on math questions during the playing of music was calculated with a calibration score Correlations between measures as well as reliabilities for all measures are presented in Table 1 Music Effect and Working Memory For all analyses the signifi cance level was set at 05 A 2 Task math vs reading comprehension 2 Auditory con dition music vs silence 2 Order music condition fi rst vs silence condition fi rst mixed model Analysis of Covari ance ANCOVA was used with performance on the WMC tasks included as a covariate to predict accuracy propor tion correct on the academically relevant tasks There was no main effect of order nor did it interact with any vari ables all F s 1 1 A main effect of auditory condition was observed F 1 136 12 38 p 001 MSE 0 29 2 03 Fur thermore there was a main effect of WMC F 1 136 25 73 p 001 MSE 1 37 2 03 However the interaction between auditory condition and WMC was not statistically signifi cant F 1 136 2 74 p 101 MSE 2 74 2 01 The main effect of task on performance was also not statistically signifi cant F 1 136 1 23 p 269 MSE 0 03 2 01 Moreover there was no signifi cant interaction between task and auditory condi tion or task and WMC both F s 2 Importantly there was a qualifying three way inter action between auditory condition task and WMC F 1 136 4 00 p 048 MSE 0 08 2 01 Although performance was worse in the presence of music in both the reading comprehension M 38 SD 18 and math M 38 SD 19 tasks relative to when the reading comprehension M 41 SD 16 and math M 44 SD 20 tasks were per formed in silence the degree to which WMC impacted the effect of auditory condition needed to be evaluated in each task sep arately performance across tasks for music M 38 SD 15 and silence M 43 SD 15 Two separate repeated measures ANCOVAs were conducted for the reading comprehension and math tasks to follow up this three way interaction In the follow ing ANCOVAs auditory condition varied within participants and performance on the WMC tasks was included as a covariate The fi rst analysis revealed that the difference in performance on the reading comprehension task between the music and silence conditions was less pronounced for participants with higher WMC scores F 1 136 6 72 p 011 MSE 0 14 2 05 A separate ANCOVA revealed that this was not the case on the math task F 1 136 0 04 p 836 MSE 0 01 2 01 Thus the observed three way interaction was driven by WMC composite scores moderating the music distraction effect for the reading comprehension but not the math task Figure 1 Metacognitive Knowledge Paired samples t tests were used to compare participants predictions for their performance across conditions and none of these comparisons approached statistical signifi cance On both tasks participants predictions of how well they would perform and the degree to which they were accurate in those predic tions did not vary between the music and silence conditions all t s 1 3 Furthermore the accuracy of performance pre dictions across academic tasks was not signifi cantly correlated with performance on WMC tasks during the playing of music r 136 02 p 815 or during silence r 136 03 p 726 The self reported percentage of time that participants listen to music while doing academically relevant tasks M 56 SD 34 such as homework was not signifi cantly related to any potentially relevant factors such as the effect of music on the math r 136 03 p 726 or reading comprehension r 136 10 p 242 tasks or WMC r 136 01 p 916 Similarly the degree to which participants believed that music affected them was not signifi cantly correlated to the effect that music had on their math r 136 07 p 413 or reading comprehension r 136 01 p 907 performance WORKING MEMORY MUSIC AND STUDENT PERFORMANCE 171 Figure 1 The moderating role of WMC in the effect of music on performance For graphical purposes the effect of music was calculated by subtracting the proportion correct during silence from the proportion correct during music on a given task Therefore negative scores represent lower accuracy during the playing of music Discussion The present study replicated previous research demonstrating that performance of academically relevant tasks suffered under a music condition compared to a silence condition e g Anderson Henderson et al 1945 Importantly the present fi ndings offered an exciting extension to this line of research by providing a novel explanation for why some have failed to observe the music distraction effect as individual differences in WMC had not previously been considered as a moderator It may be that in previous studies where an effect of music was not observed a suffi ciently large proportion of the sample had high WMC which would have hindered any attempt to observe the typically detrimental effect of music The implication of the present study is that indeed some students are correct in their assumption that it is relatively safe for them to listen to music while doing their homework Specifi cally our data sug gest that individuals who score higher on WMC tests perform reading comprehension tasks just as well when they are listen ing to music relative to performing the task in silence However individual differences in WMC did not provide a buffer against music related distraction in math tasks The fi nding that individuals with higher WMC scores could safely perform reading comprehension tasks while listening to music dovetails with previous observations of higher WMC individuals better employing executive attention skills Conway et al 2005 Kane et al 2001 We had predicted that high WMC would similarly facilitate performance on arithmetic tasks regardless of the auditory condition The failure to observe this fi nding could refl ect the fact that arithmetic tasks are supported by different cognitive processes than reading comprehension tasks For example reading comprehension tasks involve encod ing information into long term memory Atkinson Kane et al 2004 Thus a fruitful direction for future research would be to investigate whether individual differences in spatial WMC could indeed moderate the music distraction effect that has been observed in math tasks Contrary to what Anderson and Fuller 2010 found our results suggest that although some individuals can do their home work and listen to music at the same time knowledge of one s own ability may be tenuous The current study had an older sample than did Anderson and Fuller 2010 who used junior high school students It may be that by the time students reach college they believe they have developed suffi cient strategies for working on academically relevant tasks while listening to music Furthermore the way in which b