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PS2007's picture

Grobstein's Song

My group hypothesized about the effect of music on the brain. We believed that music is a distraction that leads people to concentrate less on the task at hand, and wanted to see what effect listening to music would have on the "Time to Think" activity.

These were the results of our experiment, which we found by subtracting the trial with music from the trial without music.

Jen's time increased while she was listening to music, and these are her times:

 

Act 2 - Act 1 = 38

Think 2 - Think 1 = 44

Read 2 - Read 1 = 148

Negate 2 - Negate 1 = 160

 

Paige's time decreased, and these are her times:

 

Act 2 - Act 1 = -56

Think 2 - Think 1 = -11

Read 2 - Read 1 = -59

Negate 2 - Negate 1 = -60

 

Marie's time mostly decreased, and these are her times:

Act 2 - Act 1 = -7

Think 2 - Think 1 = -28

Read 2 - Read 1 = 78

Negate 2 - Negate 1 = -40

 

We found this data interesting, because it seems to depend on the person whether music helps them concentrate or distracts them. We thought about doing another experiment where we test people who listen to music while doing work and people who need absolute silence, to see if that correlates with their results on this task.

 

 

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