I used to listen to music while doing something else,correcting papers or preparing lesson plans, but I don’t anymore. I mean I can have music in the background but I realized I wasn't paying attention to it, I was blocking it out when I was concentrated on whatever I was doing, so what was the point to play music?
I am especially talking about pop, rock, punk music, songs with lyrics that can catch your attention, and it is very common to hear people saying they have to listen to music while studying or reading for example. The problem is that most people think they are multitaskers, while they are in fact fooling themselves. Actually, no one is a real multitasker as many scientific studies reveal it, the reality is that the brain is constantly switching from one task to another one because each task competes for a limited amount of cognitive resources. As a result, it is a counter productive process, since every time you switch from one activity to another one, you are basically losing time. Not only does completion of all the tasks take longer than if they were performed one at a time, but performance on all tasks is also impaired.
I know I have endlessly argued with people about this, most of them think that listening to music actually helps them. It is not true. Our brains are not adapted to receive multiple types of information at the same time, they simply cannot process everything at the same time.
And how do we know this for sure? Scientists can see inside the brain with functional brain imaging by placing a person inside a scanner while doing certain tasks, and they are able to see that the brain is effectively switching between these two tasks. You may become a better multitasker by switching faster and faster between both tasks, but there is still a cost, and multitaskers are much worse at anything than non-multitaskers.
But you are gonna say that listening to music is not really a task, I would argue it is one if you pay attention to it and in particular to the lyrics of a song! If scientists are still investigating whether music really impairs studying, a recent study showed that ‘participants [who had to memorize things in order] performed worst while listening to music, regardless of whether they liked that music’ and ‘did the best in the quiet and while listening to a tape repeating three’.
However, there is music without lyrics which probably would require less cognitive parts of the brain? The jury is still out for this one.
So what does it mean for our society where multitasking is increasing every day, and where music is everywhere and constantly accessible. There is probably not a kid left who does not play mp3s while studying, or an office where people don’t listen to music. Of course the more hard-thinking one task is asking, the worst it is. If listening tomusic can slow you down when you are just answering your emails, think about it can do when you are trying to solve a complex math problem.
Maybe the brain will evolve and adapt, but it will take much more time than releasing the next iPhone.