Effects of background music on spatial and linguistic processing

Author(s)

Leslie A. Angel, University of Dayton
Donald J. Polzella, University of DaytonFollow
Greg C. Elvers, University of Dayton

Document Type

Conference Paper

Publication Date

2005

Publication Source

Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society

Abstract

Poster session presented at the meeting of the Psychonomic Society. College students were trained according to one of two standardized task protocols: spatial (mental rotation) or linguistic (letter classification).Testing consisted of multiple randomized trials with and without background music (classical piano) at two levels of task difficulty. Raw data for both tasks were response time and accuracy. Background music increased the speed of spatial processing at both difficulty levels, while accuracy of processing remained unaffected. In contrast, background music increased the accuracy of linguistic processing, while speed of processing remained unaffected. These findings, integrated with those of a previous experiment from our laboratory, suggest: (1) regardless of an individual’s predilection, background music can affect aspects of human performance, and (2) the specific effects, whether enhancing or disrupting, appear to reflect the similarity between the task demands and certain objective characteristics of the background music.

Document Version

Published Version

Keywords

Background Music, Spatial Processing, Linguistic Processing

eCommons Citation

Angel, Leslie A.; Polzella, Donald J.; and Elvers, Greg C., "Effects of background music on spatial and linguistic processing" (2005). Psychology Faculty Publications. 81.
https://ecommons.udayton.edu/psy_fac_pub/81