Music and concentration.

The question

Whether — and under which conditions — music supports rather than disrupts concentration on a sustained-attention task. The popular advice is contradictory; the literature is more nuanced than the advice.

What I did

I designed and ran the study end-to-end as part of an independent study credit. Participants completed a sustained-attention task under three conditions (silence, instrumental, lyrical) in a within-subject design with randomised condition order. I built the instrument, recruited the sample, ran the analysis in R, and wrote the paper to APA style.

What I found

[Placeholder findings — full write-up available on request.] Headline pattern: lyrical music produced the largest decrement in sustained attention, instrumental music produced the smallest, and individual differences in baseline music-listening habits moderated both effects.

What I couldn't test

Sample size was the binding constraint, and the convenience sample skewed undergraduate. I would have liked to test for individual-difference moderators with more statistical power than I had.