Unlocking Motivation
Humans are not naturally wired to multi-task, so, as cognitive psychologist Brian Anderson explains, “When you’re doing two things at the same time, like studying and listening to music, and one of the things requires cognitive effort, there will be a cost to how much information you can retain doing both activities.”
To understand why, it is first important to understand how the short-term memory, or working memory, encodes information. Baddeley and Hitch’s (1974) Working Memory Model proposed that the working memory has three main components:
”The visuospatial sketchpad is responsible for visual spatial information and is associated with one’s navigational abilities. It is known as the “inner eye”.
The central executive is the control center of a person’s working memory. It is responsible for directing attention, maintaining task goals, decision making, and memory retrieval.
The episodic buffer is responsible for your “episodes” or personal events that were significant. It links information from the other parts of the working memory together.
The phonological loop is responsible for verbal and auditory information. It is divided into the phonological store (“inner ear”) that processes auditory information received from an external source and the articulatory control process (“inner voice”) that processes internal auditory information and speech production.
Through rehearsal, or repetition, information from the short-term memory can be encoded into long-term memory. Unlike working memory, information in long-term memory is stored indefinitely and can be recalled through memory cues.
What does the working memory reveal about multi-tasking? Tasks that span across different parts of the working memory are easier to multi-task than those that require the same processing unit. For example, you can walk and talk on the phone since that involves different types of processes (visuospatial sketchpad and phonological loop). However, trying to solve math problems while reciting the alphabet is much more difficult since both tasks involve the use of your phonological loop.
Music, especially music with words, can similarly overload part of your working memory and make it harder to remember what you have studied. The same sentiment is shared by cognitive neuroscientist Steven Smith who says, “In general, words are distracting. So if you want to listen to music while you study, try to listen to something that does not have words, or if it does have words, hopefully, it’ll be in a language that you don’t understand at all, otherwise that’s going to distract from the stuff you’re trying to study.”
Ultimately, it requires less cognitive effort to study without music. But, it is important to remember that everyone has different study preferences and if you do enjoy having music while reviewing your notes or doing your homework, remember to make sure that the music does not overload your phonological loop and distract you from the task at hand.
References​
Baddeley A., Hitch G. (1974). Working memory. Psychol. Learn. Motiv. 8 47–89. 10.1016/j.cub.2009.12.014
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“Does Listening to Music Really Help You Study? – the College of Arts & Sciences at Texas A&M University.” Tamu.edu, 2021, liberalarts.tamu.edu/blog/2021/03/10/does-listening-to-music-really-help-you-study/.
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McCabe, David P et al. “The relationship between working memory capacity and executive functioning: evidence for a common executive attention construct.” Neuropsychology vol. 24,2 (2010): 222-243. doi:10.1037/a0017619
“Working Memory Model (Baddeley and Hitch).” Simply Psychology, 3 Nov. 2022, www.simplypsychology.org/working-memory.html#:~:text=Visuospatial%20Sketchpad%20(inner%20eye),sketchpad%20is%20used%20for%20navigation.
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