Music and Attention

I wanted to dedicate today's blog to a recent journal article that I read in the Journal of Music Therapy (spring 2009 edition, Vol. XLVI No.1). This article is entitled The Use of Music with Young Children to Improve Sustained Attention during a Vigilance Task in the Presence of Auditory Distractions. It is co-written by Laura K. Noguchi, MA, MT-BC and David E. Wolfe, PhD.

The irony is that as I am writing this blog, I have been sitting in a coffee shop getting some work done on my laptop. I am a bit under the weather today which has caused me to feel very fatigued and somewhat easily distracted with trouble concentrating on the tasks before me. All the extraneous noises you would find in a coffee shop (blenders, microwaves, talking, music) are especially distracting to me today. It is these moments when I pull out my headphones, and allow my music to drown out the noises. I am then able to concentrate more on what I am doing. Also, I have found that there are certain types of music that are distracting to me. I have created a play list entitled "laptop work" which contains songs that are conducive to my own concentration. I find that songs that have a certain deep and personal meaning to me can be distracting. I also find that songs with lots of changes (chord changes, tempo changes, etc) can be distracting to me as well.

So, my own coffee shop experience at this moment serves as an example to me of what this article is trying to relay.

I intend to cover this article in greater detail in the upcoming October 2009 MT Newsletter, but for now I just want to touch on some points.

What is attention?

"Attention, by definition, is a cognitive process that relates to immediate, at the moment, experience of an individual; a state of current and selective awareness. It is an act of directing the mind to objects or events that necessitate careful observing or listening." (Pashler, 1997)

This article mentions that since music is "an auditory medium consisting of an organized sequence of continuous, on-going sounds (and silence), most reference to the term attention/attentiveness will require listening, i.e., attending, to sounds across time".

In reference to a series of studies by Madsen and his colleagues, Madsen & Geringer (2000-2001) state that "many people enjoy listening to music, but their attention to music wanes appreciably after the initial stimulus ...". Actual concentration on music begins to decrease, and the music takes on the role of " 'background' in their cortical attentiveness" (pp..104-105), and "in order to increase vigilance, the listener needs to be directed to attend to specific events within the music and to actively respond to those events." (Wolfe and Noguchi, 2009).

In this article, Wolfe and Noguchi conduct a study consisting of kindergarten students ( N=76, more details in upcoming mention in Oct 09 MT Newsletter). These students were randomly assigned to one of four groups/conditions:

1) spoken story with no distraction (SND; n =21)

2) spoken story with distraction (SD; n =18)

3) musical story with no distraction (MND; n = 17)

4) musical story with distraction (MD; n = 20)

Significant results were found. What are your assumptions (or hypothesis, if you will)? What do you think results indicated, and more importantly, why?

As mentioned, I will follow up with more details as well as findings in the upcoming October 2009 MT Newsletter.

Oh how thankful I am for my "laptop play list"! What a tool music can be when utilized and implemented effectively ... even when it is something as simple as "background music".

Jessica

Madsen, C.K., & Geringer, J.M. (2000-2001). Meaningful listening and focus of attention. A model. Bulletin of the Council for Research in Music Education, 147, 103-108.

Pashler, J.E. (1997). The psychology of attention. Cambridege, MAS: MIT Press.

Wolfe, D.E., & Noguchi, L.K. (2009). The Use of Music with Young Children to Improve Sustained Attention during a Vigilance Task in the Presence of Auditory Distractions. Journal of Music Therapy, XLVI (1), 2009, 2-14.