Reading: The Effect of Background Music and Noise on the Cognitive Test Performance of Introverts and Extraverts

Applied Cognitive Psychology, 25: 307-313 (2011)
Authors: Stacey Dobbs, Adrian Furnham, Alastair McClelland

Main point:

Experiments with female secondary school students (n=118) showed that with one exception, all tasks were performed better if the background was silent. Noise is worse than music. Introverts are more affected by the irrelevant sounds.

My thoughts:

A strong study in a compact form. Some concerns: Many studies like that are conducted in a laboratory setting: i.e. the noise and background music is the same for everybody and comes from a CD-player. This is an unrealistic situation.  Also, since some may not like the music, the conditions are actually uneven.

Read: Furnham, Gunter, Peterson. Television distraction and the performance of introverts and extroverts.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>