Effect of background music and the cultural preference to music on adolescents’ task performance

摘要

There is a plethora of research assessesing the effect of background music on task performance; however, these results have largely been inconclusive and divided. Music is a powerful medium that possesses a lot of positive benefits. This paper addresses the gaps in the existing literature and attempts to explore the effect of background music on adolescents’ performance in a reading comprehension task. It also examines the role of culture in the said effect of performance, by assessing whether one’s own culture leads to a better performance when compared to both silence and music from a different culture. To this end, an experimental study was conducted on 34 adolescents between the ages of 13–14 (M = 13.50, SD = 0.50). The results indicate that a strong positive effect is achieved on task performance when background music is present, especially one that identifies with the participants’ cultural background.