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

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Summary

Introduction

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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