Does Music Really Help You Concentrate?

Now the term is well under way, and students everywhere are plugged into headphones up in their bedrooms, or on a corner of the kitchen table, or on the sofa, doing homework it is time to ask this question. Does music really help you concentrate?

In the Guardian Education section, Dean Burnett recently investigated this topic, and argued that music can be useful as a non-invasive background noise, because we have two attention systems: a conscious system that we use to focus on the task in hand, and an unconscious system that needs “feeding” with stimulus to keep it calm. Music quietens our unconscious attention system, and allows our conscious attention system to concentrate on the homework. Our unconscious attention system would otherwise prove very distracting, with its incessant need to ask questions: “What’s that noise? Why can’t she stop sniffing? What is everyone else doing now? Let’s just check Facebook.”

But not just any old music will do. It has to be music you like. It is all down to personal preference, as a study by Huang and Shi suggests. Music you like increases focus, while music you don’t impedes it. Which is why headphones are so handy – they avoid the question from parents – “What is that noise?” and “Turn it off!” providing you keep the volume low, nobody need ever know that heavy metal, or Shirley Bassey (!) or Chopin are what you need to concentrate.

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