Music: Helpful or Hindering?

Abstract

This study looked at the effects of playing music while students complete a quiz. 191 students from the Helena School District between the eighth and tenth grades took an assigned quiz either silently or while listening to one of three tested music types. The songs used were Royals by Lorde to represent popular music, She’s Gone by Hall and Oates to represent lesser known music, and Symphony No. 25 in G Minor by Mozart to represent classical music. The students were timed as they worked. These times were statistically analyzed to determine if playing music while students worked caused them to spend more time on the assignment. Next, the quizzes were all corrected. The numbers of correct answers were statistically analyzed to determine if playing music had an effect on the number of correct answers on the quizzes. From the analysis, there was not sufficient evidence that playing music had an effect on the time it took to complete the quiz or on the number of correct answers. There was no evidence that any one type of music was more helpful than any other or than none at all. There also was no evidence that any one type of music hindered student performance either.