How Noise Affects Memory and Learning
How Noise Affects Memory and Learning
Your Name
Your College
How Noise Affects Memory and Learning According to past studies background and low-level noise in homes, work, and school, disrupts concentration and lowers the performance of people while learning and studying. For example, Anderson and Fuller (2010) looked at the effects of music on reading comprehension. Their results state the music environment reading comprehension score was lower than the non-music environment score. Even though this study was done with music, no matter what type of sound it is, it will bother someone’s concentration and performance on a task. A study has shown having background white noise while performing a task, such as word recall, will produce low performance (Kjellberg, Ljung, & Hallman, 2008). It also depends on the type of population you are trying to study. For some populations, the predictions of noise being a distraction, is stronger. For example, people with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder are more vulnerable to distractions than people without ADHD or any other type of disorder (Soderlund, Sikstrom, Loftenes, & Sonuga-Barke, 2010). This introduction will further examine the effects of noise on learning and memory.
Music and Learning/Memory It has been shown that music has a negative effect on reading performance (Anderson & Fuller, 2010; Perham & Vizard, 2011). Anderson and Fuller (2010) did an investigation of the effect of lyrical music on reading comprehension by adolescents. They used the reading comprehensions subtest of the Gates-MacGinitie Reading tests, 4th edition. The music that was used in this study was taken from the Billboard Magazine’s (2006) top hit singles. Anderson and Fuller (2010) tested three hypotheses; (1) a difference exists between reading comprehension scores completed in the environment without music and scores obtained with lyrical music playing in the background, (2) a gender
Your Name
Your College
How Noise Affects Memory and Learning According to past studies background and low-level noise in homes, work, and school, disrupts concentration and lowers the performance of people while learning and studying. For example, Anderson and Fuller (2010) looked at the effects of music on reading comprehension. Their results state the music environment reading comprehension score was lower than the non-music environment score. Even though this study was done with music, no matter what type of sound it is, it will bother someone’s concentration and performance on a task. A study has shown having background white noise while performing a task, such as word recall, will produce low performance (Kjellberg, Ljung, & Hallman, 2008). It also depends on the type of population you are trying to study. For some populations, the predictions of noise being a distraction, is stronger. For example, people with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder are more vulnerable to distractions than people without ADHD or any other type of disorder (Soderlund, Sikstrom, Loftenes, & Sonuga-Barke, 2010). This introduction will further examine the effects of noise on learning and memory.
Music and Learning/Memory It has been shown that music has a negative effect on reading performance (Anderson & Fuller, 2010; Perham & Vizard, 2011). Anderson and Fuller (2010) did an investigation of the effect of lyrical music on reading comprehension by adolescents. They used the reading comprehensions subtest of the Gates-MacGinitie Reading tests, 4th edition. The music that was used in this study was taken from the Billboard Magazine’s (2006) top hit singles. Anderson and Fuller (2010) tested three hypotheses; (1) a difference exists between reading comprehension scores completed in the environment without music and scores obtained with lyrical music playing in the background, (2) a gender
References: Anderson, S.A., & Fuller, G. B. (2010). Effect of music on reading comprehension of junior high school students Boman, E. (2004). The effects of noise and gender on children’s episodic and semantic memory. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 45(5), 407-416 9450.2004.00422.x Cambridge Brain Science (2012) Retrieved February 18, 2013 http://www.cambridgebrainsciences.com/browse/memory/test/digit-span Crawford, J. R., & Henry, J. D. (2004). The positive and negative affect schedule (PANAS): construct validity, measurement properties and normative data in a large non-clinical Hygge, S., Boman, E., & Enmarker, I. (2003). The effects of road traffic noise and meaningful irrelevant speech on different memory systems Kjellberg, A., Ljung, R., & Hallman D. (2008). Recall of words heard in noise. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 22(8), 1088-1098 Perham, N. & Vizard, J. (2011). Can preference for background music mediate the irrelevant sound effect? Applied Cognitive Psychology, 25(4), 625-631 Soderlund, G. B, Sikstrom, S., Loftesnes, J. M., & Sonuga-Barke, E. J. (2010). The effects of background white noise on memory performance in inattentive school children Behavioral and Brain Function, 6(55), doi: 10.1186/1744-9081-6-55 Sounddogs (2013) Retrieved February 21, 2013 http://www.sounddogs.com/sound-effects.asp Wais, P. E., & Gazzaley, A. (2011). The impact of auditory distraction on retrieval of visual memories of positive and negative affect: The PANAS scales. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54(6), 1063–1070.