The Effects of Background Music on Reading Performance

This book looks at what kinds of effects music have on the performance of a second language reading comprehension task in Taiwanese college students. An experiment involving 123 participants from a medium size college in southern Taiwan was conducted where the participants performed a reading comprehension task with either classical music, hip hop music, or with no music in the background. The results of the study indicated that the reading comprehension score for the control group was significantly different than the reading comprehension score for the hip hop music group. This showed that playing hip hop music in the background has a greater effect on the performance of a reading comprehension test as compared to classical music or with no music. This was in accordance with the original hypothesis and with the idea that music that is perceived distractive will have a greater effect on task performance and concentration.