Abstract
Although many people listen to music while performing tasks that require sustained attention, the literature is inconclusive about its effects. The present study examined performance on a sustained-attention task and explored the effect of background music on the prevalence of different attentional states, founded on the non-linear relationship between arousal and performance. Forty students completed a variation of the Psychomotor Vigilance Task—that has long been used to measure sustained attention—in silence and with their self-selected or preferred music in the background. We collected subjective reports of attentional state (specifically mind-wandering, task-focus and external distraction states) as well as reaction time (RT) measures of performance. Results indicated that background music increased the proportion of task-focus states by decreasing mind-wandering states but did not affect external distraction states. Task-focus states were linked to shorter RTs than mind-wandering or external distraction states; however, background music did not reduce RT or variability of RT significantly compared to silence. These findings show for the first time that preferred background music can enhance task-focused attentional states on a low-demanding sustained-attention task and are compatible with arousal mediating the relationship between background music and task-performance.
Highlights
Many people listen to background music during tasks that require sustained attention, there is still no consensus about its effect on performance
Attentional lapses have been found to be underpinned by the locus coeruleus–norepinephrine system (LC–NE; Cohen, Aston-Jones, & Gilzenrat, 2004), a neuromodulatory nucleus in the brain stem that projects norepinephrine to the neocortex and mediates effects of arousal (Berridge & Waterhouse, 2003)
Order of the music conditions did not show any significant effects on thoughtprobe response proportions, reaction time (RT), or standard deviation of RT (p ≥ 0.23), and there was no interaction between order and music-present/absent on these variables (p ≥ 0.10); analyses were collapsed across order
Summary
Many people listen to background music during tasks that require sustained attention, there is still no consensus about its effect on performance (for reviews, see Kämpfe, Sedlmeier, & Renkewitz, 2011; Küssner 2017). When baseline LC activity, or arousal, is either too low or too high, people perform poorer (Aston-Jones & Cohen, 2005) and experience attentional lapses that have been characterised, respectively, as episodes of mind-wandering (hypo-arousal) or external distraction (hyper-arousal) (i.e., off-task attentional states; Unsworth & Robison, 2016). An intermediate baseline LC activity is linked to optimal performance and a task-focused attentional state (i.e., on-task state; see Fig. 1; Aston-Jones & Cohen, 2005; Unsworth & Robison, 2016)
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