The effects of familiarity and language of background music on working memory and language tasks in Singapore

Abstract

The effect of background music on learning and academic performance is highly relevant to the everyday lives of millions of students worldwide. To investigate this, we recruited 165 undergraduate students (71 males and 94 females, mean age of 21.87 years) to complete arithmetic, reading comprehension, and word memory tasks while exposed to familiar or unfamiliar, foreign or first language music, and no music. With the task scores as dependent variables, a significant main effect was observed for music familiarity but not for language. Further analysis showed that only the word memory task was affected by music with significantly higher scores in the familiar than unfamiliar music conditions. Despite a slight negative trend, no significant effect was found in the interaction between music and language conditions. Depending on the task, familiarity but not language of music affected learning and task performance when compared to the no music condition.