EFFECT OF POP MUSIC ON

COGNITIVE TASK PERFORMANCE

PSY 323 Cognition
Kwan Ting An, Justin Lee Ee-Rene, Joevy Liau Thsun Cheng, Jacky Lim Kah Yen Madhanaa Kumar a/l Mohan SCSJ-0009556 SCSJ-0007918 SCSJ-0008856 SCSJ-0009218 SCSJ-0009540

INTRODUCTION Cognitive tasks are required a person to mentally process new information and allow them to recall, retrieve that information from memory and to use that information at a later time in the same or similar situations. (Kester 2012) an art of sound in time that expresses ideas and emotions in significant forms through the elements of rhythm, melody, harmony, and color.

INTRODUCTION
The

ability to attend selectively to meaningful sources of information while ignoring irrelevant ones is essential to competent and adaptive functioning (Lane & Pearson, 1982)
mentioned that employees had considered music as a form of enhancement to workplaces effectiveness and productiveness

Schoenhals,(2004)

THEORY

Limited-Capacity Theory Kahneman(1973)

Attention can be deployed at any one time is limited

When a person fails to recognize the information Unable to pay enough attention

RESEARCH QUESTION

Does music affect the participants attention while doing cognitive task?

VARIABLES

Independent variable: Presence of music Dependent variable: Cognitive task performance

Controlled variable: level of difficulty for the task

OPERATIONAL DEFINITION
Brain X-Trainer Professor Dr. Othman bin Dato Hj. Mohamed 10 different patterns will be showed 5 seconds for each patterns 25 questions regarding the patterns will be given Memory retention Means score will be calculated and to be compared

LITERATURE REVIEW 1

Comparing the effects of aging and background noise on short-term memory performance Murphy. D., Craik. F., Li. Z., and Schneider. B University of Toronto Participants were young adults and older adults

Result: Older adults in quiet setting perform the same as the young adults in noise setting; Younger adults perform better in a quieter environment
Critical review: The number of participants were too small and it only involves students from that particular University. Disparity between the years of education between both group of participants.

LITERATURE REVIEW 2
How background music effects concentration in Taiwanese college students by Peter Tze Different types of music while students reading comprehension task. Classical music, hip-hop music and without music Result: Music with higher intensity is more distracting and greater effect on task performance or concentration Critical review: It is time-constraint to participants to complete the task in 30 minutes.

HYPOTHESIS
It is hypothesized that if background music is present, does it lower the attention of participants towards cognitive task.

OBJECTIVE
The main goal of this study is to determine whether the music is the factor of distraction to cognitive task performance. The participants will be requested to answer an answer sheet with 25 questions. The questions are actually based on a software program called Brain X Factor to test the memory and examine the students memorizing skills under 2 different environments. Throughout the goals of this study, a research questions emerged: Does music distract the students when doing cognitive relevant tasks?

PARTICIPANTS

Participants aged in between 18 to 25 Students of Research Methods class of Ms.Uma There were a total of 42 participants consist of male and female college students.

MEASUREMENT MATERIALS
Brain X-Trainer was used by the researchers as test sample in the research. The Brain X-Trainer was developed by Matroll Group of Companies. The corporation is responsible for developing products and services for the Selangor Department of Education. Brain X-Trainer consists of 10 test items and 25 questions about memory retention. Test items are displayed for 5 seconds and 5 seconds duration for response to be recorded.

SCREENSHOTS OF THE SOFTWARE USED

SCREENSHOTS OF THE SOFTWARE USED

SCREENSHOTS OF THE SOFTWARE USED

PROCEDURE
Consent was given to participants Filtered according to age group Participants were given a briefing

Nature of experiment

Participants were required to memorize 10 test items Responses were recorded

Immediately after all items were displayed

Paper distributed to fill in responses Experiment lasted for 30 minutes Thanked participants for their cooperation and participation

PROCEDURE
Discussion on results of experiment Examine limitations and improvements

RESULT
experiment 1 or 2
24 23.5 23 experiment 1 or 2 22.5

22
21.5 exp 1 exp 2

DISCUSSION

Bradley and Furnham (1997), stated that there is a significance effect of pop music on both extroverts and introverts while carrying out cognitive tasks. Burack (1994) found out that human mind has a finite capacity.

Tends to filter out old information (selective attention).

LIMITATIONS & RECOMMENDATIONS

Researchers did not show the significance of the mean score difference, results not valid and reliable.

A T-test design should be used in future research to clarify the significance of results

Duration for the participants to answer the questions was too long.

Duration for the answering session should be shorten and adjust the level of distraction.