The effect of music on learning
By Kimia Taherion
Junior Category (Grades 7-8)
Study | Psychology, Statistics
BCVSF Note: The required ethics forms have been submitted for this project.
A couple of weeks after the summer break, I was visiting our local public library and noticed some high school students studying, and each one had headphones on. It made me wonder, what music they were listening to, and if it had any effect on their studies. This set me down a new path, I started researching about how music affects our concentration, and it turns out, not many studies have compared pop music to classical music. Not only was I curious, but this would also make a good science fair project.
My plan was overall simple. I was going to get a few volunteers from my school to drop by the computer lab at lunch recces to take a simple test while listening to no music. I would then use those scores as the average. The next day, I would take those same students back to the computer lab to take a very similar test, but with classical music. On the final day, I would yet again give the same students a similar test to do, but this time, with pop music. I would go home, mark the tests, and tally the results. Then, with a simple program, I was to make a graph comparing both the pop music test scores, and the classical music scores to the no music scores. Seeing if they had a positive or negative effect.
