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By Grace Robinson, Isabella Alcorso and Amy Pailthorpe

YEAR 9 FAHAN SCHOOL, TASMANIA

An investigation into whether students really

work better without music.

Have the Teachers Been Right All

Along?

+AIM: To investigate whether listening to music affects a student's concentration and recall of various pictures. 

HYPOTHESIS: Listening to music whilst memorising, will cause students to lose their concentration and they will not be able to recall as many pictures as they would when not listening to music. 

+METHOD:

1.4 classes were surveyed in total.

2. At the start of each survey, an answer sheet was given to each student.

3. Two collages of 20 photos were shown on the classroom’s television, one with music playing and the other without. Whether music was playing first or second was alternated between classes. The students had 30 seconds to memorise, then 1 minute to write down as many objects as they could recall, whilst the music was still playing (if it was the music trial).

4. The data was collated and placed in a frequency table.

 

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How many of twenty objects were memorised with and without music.

Score (out of 20) Without Music With Music

0 0 01 0 02 0 03 0 04 0 25 2 46 4 67 8 148 10 149 8 610 14 611 3 112 4 113 1 114 1 015 0 0

TOTAL 55 55AVERAGE 9 8

RESULTS:

+RESULTS (continued):

+DISCUSSION:

The results showed that more students remembered more pictures when no music played compared to when music was played. The average from the results with no music was nine out of twenty (45%) and the average from the results with music was eight out of twenty (40%). This is only a 5% difference, which is the percentage where it is borderline on the level of significance. Throughout the test some girls could have cheated off other girls and therefore the results are made less reliable. Also some girls may not have known some pictures on the screen and so that also may have influenced the results.

+ IMPROVEMENTS:

Some improvements that could be made to make the results more reliable are that the song choice could vary so people’s concentration might be different. The amount of time given and pictures given to look at could also be an improvement so more reliable results could be recorded. Also the set up of students could be arranged differently so some girls are not influenced by others.

+ CONCLUSION: Of the students that were tested, there was a 5% improvement on average when not listening to music. However, 5% is borderline significant therefore more students would have to be interviewed to have a more reliable result.