Music and concentration.
A self-designed study, end to end.
— THE QUESTION
Does the type of music playing during a focus task — instrumental, lyrical, or none — change task performance and self-reported concentration?
— WHAT I DID
Three-condition within-subjects design. Each participant completed three matched cognitive tasks under the three audio conditions, randomized. Analyzed in R using a mixed-effects model.
— WHAT I FOUND
Lyrical music produced reliably worse task performance than either instrumental or silence, but self-reported concentration didn't track the performance gap. People felt focused while doing worse.
— WHAT I COULDN'T TEST
The task-type interaction. With more participants I'd want to know whether the lyrical penalty is uniform or selectively hits verbal-memory tasks.
Full paper available in /materials. If you have been given a link, the password works across all pages there.