Music and learning

By Nawal Haq

“Band karo ye gaanay waanay, aisay kon parhta hai” is something many of us grew up hearing. You sit in your favorite spot, open your chemistry book, and put on your headphones. Then, you hear, “Ye kaisi parhai hai?” and unplug your headphones in defeat.
People have always told us music means distraction, so we should study in silence. Parents say it, teachers hint at it; this belief is so common that few of us question it.
I was completing the 30 differentiation problems I got for homework. I listened to my favorite study playlist as I worked. When my dad came up to me and said, “Aren’t you studying?” it caught me off guard; I had been studying for the past hour, and he assumed I wasn’t because I was listening to music. It happened often. I’d study with music playing, and someone would always have something to say.
I quickly learned that music has a negative connotation. You could be studying for hours on end, but the presence of music would overshadow your efforts. It pushed me to dig deeper into why this is. Why is music treated as the enemy of studying in Pakistani homes? Is it actually that disruptive? So I looked into what the research says.
The answer is more complicated than either side admits. Experimental studies show mixed results. This depends on the task, the type of music, and individual traits. A 2021 study by Franziska Goltz and Makiko Sadakata looked at how people use background music. They focused on activities like reading, writing, memorizing, and critical thinking. Their results showed that people use different strategies for when, how often, why, and what kind of background music they use. Students played music for nearly 39 percent of the time while reading and 43 percent of the time while writing. Why? Most said music helps them concentrate or lifts their mood. Others said it keeps them awake or drowns out the noise of a busy house.
While performing difficult tasks, participants tended to use less music. Memorizing content was one such task where music was almost absent, whereas while performing easier repetitive tasks they were less picky about what they played. This shows that students weren’t hitting play at random but were adjusting their music to their work.
The type of music was also a significant factor. The survey found that students overwhelmingly said that music with lyrics is the biggest distraction when they study. Few felt that vocals never bothered them, and pop music drew almost as much suspicion. Listeners viewed calm instrumental music as barely distracting at all. Research backs this up. Lyrics, especially in a language they understand, compete with the brain’s part used for reading and memorizing, while calm instrumental and classical music have been linked to better memory.
So what exactly happens when we have our favorite songs blasting in our ears? Luca Kiss and Karina J. Linnell studied how background noise affects students in 2021. They had students complete a long task that demanded attention, twice: once in silence and once with self-chosen music. The researchers tracked what state of mind the students were in while they worked. Every time their focus drifted, they had to report it. The results showed that with their preferred music on, the students spent far more time focused on the task, and the researchers traced it to a single phenomenon: mind-wandering. Music prevented one from drifting deep into their thoughts and immersing themselves in the task at hand.
When doing a dull task, your brain seeks entertainment. Music helps by bringing your alertness back to the sweet spot of focus. It is boredom that you feel, not music that scatters your attention.
Put the two studies, and the picture is clear. Music is not the enemy of studying: untested rules are. Music is a tool and, when used correctly, will only bring out optimum performance in us. Music affects us all in unique ways. For some, it helps with repetitive quadratic problems. For others, it’s great for tackling kinematics numerical. And the person best placed to judge which is which? You. Not the voice at your door asking, “Ye kaisi parhai hai?”

The writer is a student of A-2, NIXOR College, currently researching on Music and cognitive learning.