Why do Some People need to Listen to Music when Studying?
Our brains are mysterious things. One would think that music would serve as a distraction when trying to accomplish such a cognitively involved task like studying, however many people attest to greater concentration when studying while listening to music. But why is that?
To understand the role music plays in concentration we first have to understand attention and how it works. For all intense and purposes, attention can be divided into two aspects, conscious and unconscious. Conscious attention is what you are purposefully focusing on and attending to, while unconscious attention can be thought of as what falls into background noise, you are aware of it but you’re not concentrating on it. For example, let’s say that you are attending a lecture, if you are paying attention and attentive then you are consciously attending to the lecture. If, during that lecture, you decide it is more fun to draw in your notebook and start attending to that as your primary task, then the lecture becomes something you are unconsciously attending to.
Music serves to help concentration because it is a controlled unconscious stimulus. By primarily focusing on one task and having music playing in the background you can drown out other stimuli (like extra noises in the environment) and attend to the task at hand. In short playing music helps prevent you from getting distracted. Just remember that this is on a spectrum you want to select music that you are able to tune out, otherwise you may find yourself distracted by the music, thus defeating the purpose altogether. If you are looking for good music to help you study, the answer may actually be in video games. Some people say video game soundtracks are best because video game music is designed to help create an immersive experience without being too distracting.