The Effect of Background Music and Noise on the Cognitive Test Performance of [618641]

The Effect of Background Music and Noise on the Cognitive Test Performance of
Introverts and Extraverts
STACEY DOBBS, ADRIAN FURNHAM *,yand ALASTAIR McCLELLAND
Division of Psychology and Language Sciences, University College London, UK
Summary: Previous research has found that the performance of introverts on complex cognitive tasks is more negatively affected
by distracters, e.g. music and background noise, than the performance of extraverts. The present study extends previous research
by examining whether or not background noise would prove to be as distracting as music. In the presence of silence, background
UK garage music and background noise, 118 female secondary school students carried out three cognitive tests. It was predicted
that introverts would do less well on all of the tasks than extraverts in the presence of music and noise but in silence performance
would be the same. A significant interaction was found on all three of the tasks. It was also predicted that there would be a main
effect of background sound: Performance would be worse in the presence of music and noise than silence. Results confirmed this
prediction with one exception. This study also found a positive correlation between extraversion and intelligence, the implications
of which are also discussed. The findings support the Eysenckian hypothesis of the difference in optimum cortical arousal in
introverts and extraverts. Copyright #2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
INTRODUCTION
Music is more pervasive now that at any other point in
history, and as a result there has been a growing volume ofresearch concerning the effects of background sound (musicand noise) on cognitive performance (Cassidy & MacDo-nald, 2007; Furnham & Strabc, 2002). There is an important
applied cognitive psychology literature on the effects of
noise on learning and recall (Beaman, 2005; Kjeleberg,Ljung, & Hallman, 2008; Oakes & North, 2006). There havealso been studies demonstrating the beneficial effects ofmusic listening on pain (Mitchell, MacDonald, Knussen, &Serpell, 2007; Pothoulaki, MacDonald, Flowers, Stamataki,Filiopoulos, Stamatiadis, & Stathakis, 2008).
There is no doubt that answering the questions of how,
when and why background sound can affect productivity, and
well being as well as learning are clearly important (Evans &Johnson, 2000; Lesiuk, 2005) The literature has tended to look
at three factors: The nature of the distraction (i.e. sound vs.
music), on particular tasks (complex vs. simple) by particular
individuals (extravert vs. introverts) (Banbury & Berry, 1998).
For instance Lesiuk (2005) in a study of the work performanceof 56 people over 5 weeks found that music significantly
influenced mood (state positive effect) and time on the task.
The more people listened to the music the more positive theirmood, though it had little effect on work quality. She alsonoted that some personality types maybe more susceptible tothe mood enhancing effects than others.
Early studies showed music is more likely to have an effect
on performance when the task is complex (Smith, 1961).Kirkpatrick (1943) demonstrated the negative impact of
background music on cognitive performance during tasks that
required mental concentration, but McGhee and Gardner(1949) found that music had no significant impact on jobperformance in an industrial setting. They also concluded that
music had no effect on tasks involving mental concentration.
Oldham, Cummings, Mischel, Schmidtke, and Zhou (1995)showed that employees who listened to music viaap e r s o n a l
stereo for 4 weeks had improved performance, turnoverintentions, organisation satisfaction and mood states.
Other research has attempted to establish whether
different types of music produce different effects on task
performance (Furnham, Gunter, & Peterson, 1994). Findingshave been inconsistent: Rauscher, Shaw, and Ky (1993)found that spatial IQ scores improved in the presence ofsome of Mozart’s music, whereas Williams (1961) found that
classical music had no effect on a reading comprehensiontask. Furnham and Strabc (2002) noted that the type of musicand tasks administered to participants has a notable impact
on results; vocal music was found to be significantly more
distracting than purely instrumental pieces on similar tasks.Furnham, Trew, and Sneade (1999) examined whetherperformance would differ on a reading comprehension task,a logical problem-solving task and a coding task in thepresence of background vocal music, instrumental music orsilence. Results showed that only on the logic task didinstrumental music improve performance.
In an important review Beaman (2005) noted that the
‘nature of the noise’ has an important impact of distract-ibility. Studies show that irrelevant noise that has abruptchanges in frequency and pitch is particularly disruptive, butthat sound intensity has less effect. He also reviewed task-specific effects such as the difference between verbal andnumerical processing showing how distracting noise hasdifferent effects of different tasks. Further he noted a very
few studies on individual differences (intelligence, noise
sensitivity) that seem to interact with the noise and task toeffect performance.
Work in this area has been informed by Eysenck’s (1967a)
theory of arousal. Under-stimulated extraverts are predis-posed to pursue high stimulation through arousal inducingbehaviours; while over-stimulated introverts are inclined toavoid strong stimulation and arousal. Campbell and HawleyApplied Cognitive Psychology ,Appl. Cognit. Psychol. 25: 307–313 (2011)
Published online 7 April 2010 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/acp.1692
*Correspondence to: Adrian Furnham, Division of Psychology and
Language Sciences, University College London, UK.E-mail: ucjtsaf@ucl.ac.uk
yProfessor.
Copyright #2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

(1982) tested the theory and found that, when studying in a
library, extraverts were more likely to choose to work in
areas with bustle and activity while introverts were more
likely to opt for a quiet area, away from the noise.
Eysenck’s (1981) theory of personality predicts that on
tasks of reasonable difficulty, introverts will perform better innon-stimulating conditions, as well in moderately stimulat-ing situations and less well when under more intensestimulation and stress. Background music or noise, with itspotential to increase levels of arousal, should have a more
negative affect on introverts as it will cause them to exceed
their optimum functioning level. A series of studies havedemonstrated that introverts who are ‘over-aroused’ as aresult of background disturbance show a greater detriment inperformance than extraverts. Daoussis and McKelvie (1986)found introverts performed more poorly on a memory task inthe presence of music compared to silence. Earlier researchby Binaschi and Pelfini (1966) demonstrated how introverts
and extraverts differed in their levels of performance on a
visual and auditory reaction task in the presence of noise,with extraverts having shorter reaction times. Furnham andBradley (1997) found that introverts were detrimentallyaffected by music in a reading comprehension task and adelayed memory recall task. There was no significantdifference between the introverts and extraverts scores whenthe tests were conducted in silence. Furnham and Strabc
(2002) provided evidence to suggest that introverts are more
negatively affected by background noise than extraverts,whilst noting a trend for a lower level of performance in bothintroverts and extraverts in the presence of music. Ylias andHeaven (2003) also found extraverts performed better thanintroverts on a reading task when distracted but that this wasthe only ‘Big Five’ trait that had any main or interactioneffect on the task performance.
Belojevic, Slepcevic, and Jokovljevic (2001) looked at
concentration problems, fatigue and noise annoyance underquite and noisy conditions. They found, as predicted,introverts were slower than extraverts in the noisy conditionand reported more concentration problems and fatigueduring mental processing.
More recently Cassidy and MacDonald (2007) got 40
participants to complete five cognitive tasks in four different
sound conditions (high and low arousing/affective music,
noise, silence). Music, particularly high arousal musicproduced distraction and reduced performance most, followedby noise, then low arousal music and finally silence. They alsofound a personality (introversion/extraversion) effect forimmediate and delayed recall and a sound /C2personality effect
for the stroop task: Introverts were significantly poorer thanextraverts in the presence of high arousing music. They also
noted that extraverts reported working in more social and
arousing environments and argued that extraverts may need toseek ‘more extreme emotional meaning to achieve the level ofarousal met by introverts while in the presence of preferredrelaxing music’ (p. 533).
The current study investigates the effects personality
(level of extraversion) and auditory distraction (backgroundmusic and noise) on performance in three cognitive tasks.
The degree of extraversion of the participants was
ascertained using the Eysenck Personality Inventory (EPI;Eysenck & Eysenck, 1968) rather than the Eysenck
Personality Questionnaire (EPQ; Eysenck & Eysenck,
1975). A number of re-analyses of the relationship between
extraversion and arousal have been conducted, and severalpreviously reported relationships between extraversion andarousal were found to hold for the EPI-extraversion scale
but not for the EPQ-extraversion scale (see Cox-Fuenzalida,
Gilliland, & Swickert, 2001) because it contains moreimpulsivity and fewer sociability items.
This study makes use of vocal (rather than purely
instrumental) music. Iwanga and Ito (2002) examined the
disturbance effect of vocal music, instrumental music andnatural sound on memory performance, and found thatperceived disturbance was highest under the vocal conditions(although disturbance was also evident in the instrumentalcondition). Similarly, Furnham and Bradley (1997) foundthat complex vocal music was more likely to have an impacton task performance than less complex, instrumental music.
The current study extended this research area in four ways:
First using a purer measure of extraversion; examining thedistracting effects of noise as well as music; measuringthe intelligence of the participants and using IQ tests as thetask-related dependent variable.
Two predictions were made: First, that there would be a
main effect of background sound, so that for all three tasksperformance would be best in silence, followed by back-
ground music and worst in the presence of background noise.
Second, that for each of the three cognitive tasks, therewould be an interaction between degree of extraversion andthe distracting effect of background music and noise. Apositive relationship between level of extraversion and
performance was anticipated in the presence of bothbackground music and noise, but not in the silence condition.
METHOD
Participants
One hundred and eighteen female school children aged 11–
18 took part in the study. Each child completed the EPI(Eysenck & Eysenck, 1968) in order to measure her degree ofextraversion.
Materials
Sounds
The ‘noise’ was produced from the Avid Records Special FXCD. The particular extract of noise was created on an AppleMac new generation laptop using the programme Cool EditPro to mix the selected sounds together. The samples used
were children playing, general sounds of people, an office
atmosphere and laughs. The length of the finished piece was12 minutes and 12 seconds. The noise was selected so as to be
as representative as possible of the everyday working
environment of a school classroom. The music selected wasUK garage-style music taken from the Ministry of Sound:Clubbers Guide to Ibiza 2007 (Various Artists, 2007). Thiswas chosen as garage music is frequently heard in the chartsand on the radio and thus the musical style would be familiarto the participants. All the pieces selected had a high tempo,
Copyright #2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Appl. Cognit. Psychol. 25: 307–313 (2011)308 S. Dobbs et al.

were vocal and had considerable instrumental layering. The
songs chosen were; We Can Rise by Copyright featuring
Tasita D’Mour (Club Mix), Da Bump by Mr V featuring Miss
Patty (Warren Clarke Remix) and Last Night a DJ Saved MyLife by Seamus Haji featuring KayJay (Haji and EmanuelClub Mix). The total length of the music was 13 minutes and44 seconds. The sounds were presented viaa cassette player
placed at the front of the room. Decibel levels were notmeasured but all music was played at the same level in allconditions. Previous studies showed spatial dispersion of
source and sound intensity (50–70 db) had no effect on
cognitive processing (Jones, Miles, & Page, 1990) though itmay well have been best to measure the loudness of bothdistractions.
Tests
The tests were at an appropriate level of difficulty for thesample: (1) Raven’s Progressive Matrices (Raven, Court, &
Raven, 1992) is a graded test of abstract (perceptual)
reasoning. It consists of 60 items arranged in five sets, each of12 items. An item contains a figure with a missing piece,below which are either six (first two sets) or eight (theremaining three sets) alternative pieces (one of which iscorrect) to complete the figure. (2) The Wonderlic PersonnelTest is a test of general cognitive ability, which had a highcorrelation with the Weschler Adult Intelligence Scale
(Wonderlic Personnel Test Inc., 1992). It consists of 50-items
graded in difficulty, and is administered in 12 minutes. Theitems include word and number comparisons, disarrangedsentences, serial analysis of geometric figures and storyproblems that require mathematical and logical solutions. (3)The verbal reasoning test was compiled from test itemspresented in Bryon (2006). The task consisted of a mixture ofquestion types: Antonym identification (identifying the
antonym of the target word amongst alternatives), sentence-
completion (choosing an appropriate completion of asentence amongst alternatives) and grammar (choosing thegrammatically correct sentence amongst alternatives).
IQ scores
Scores from the Middle Years Information System (MidYISn. d., 2008) were available for all participants. Developed atthe Curriculum, Evaluation and Management Centre (CEM),
University of Durham, the system provides scores relating to
vocabulary and word fluency, mathematical speed andknowledge, non-verbal ability, skills (e.g. proof reading) andperceptual speed and accuracy. MidYIS scores are used byschools to predict pupil’s future potential and academicperformance; in this study, the overall score for eachparticipant was used as a proxy for IQ.
Procedure
Subjects were randomly allocated to one of three groups and
seated so that they could not see any other individual’sresponses. Participants were given the EPI at the start of theexperiment. All participants then completed the three tasks;one task in the noise condition, one in the music conditionand one in silence. The background sound was played viaa
CD player at the front of the room at a constant level. Therandom allocation of participants to task/background sound
condition combinations was achieved using a Latin square
design, and within a combination the order of the tasks was
also randomised.
RESULTS
The correlation matrix presented in Table 1 shows that there
was a positive correlation between performance on the three
tests—and between the tests and the MidYIS scores—ourproxy for IQ. However, there was also an unexpected positivecorrelation between extraversion, performance on the threetests and MidYIS. It was thus clear that we needed to controlfor IQ (i.e. use the MidYIS scores as a covariate) whenassessing the influence of extraversion on task performanceunder the three noise conditions. In addition, because of the
loss of statistical power and other problems associated with
the dichotomisation of quantitative variables (see MacCal-lum, Zhang, Preacher, & Rucker, 2002), we decided to usehierarchical multiple regression (rather than ANCOVA) asthe method of analysis. For each of the three tests, a modelwas constructed with MidYIS as a covariate, backgroundsound (dummy coded) as one predictor and extraversion as a(continuous) second predictor. An interaction term between
background sound and extraversion was also included. Prior
to the analysis of performance on each test, the extraversionvariable was centred, so that the main effect of backgroundsound could be examined at the mean level of extraversion(i.e. a comparison of the adjusted means). These means arepresented in Table 2.
Table 1. Table of correlations between the measures of cognitive
ability and extraversiona
Extraversion Ravens WonderlicVerbal
reasoning
Raven’s .59
Wonderlic .68 .54
Verbal reasoning .47 .36 .50MidYIS (IQ) .42 .57 .56 .62
aAll correlations p<.001.
Table 2. Table of adjusted mean scores and standard deviations for
the Ravens, Wonderlic and verbal reasoning tests under conditions
of silence, music and noise
Condition
Test Silence Music Noise
Ravens
M 25.35 23.91 22.70
SD 3.19 4.19 3.22
Wonderlic
M 24.98 25.15 21.39
SD 3.09 4.70 4.29
Verbal reasoning
M 24.21 23.18 21.73
SD 4.51 4.42 4.20
Copyright #2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Appl. Cognit. Psychol. 25: 307–313 (2011)Background noise and test performance 309

Raven’s test of abstract reasoning
Casewise diagnostics identified two outliers (values with
standardised residuals >j3.0j) and these participants were
removed before continuing with the analysis. The modelrevealed a significant main effect of extraversion, F(1,
109)¼26.69, p<.001, which accounted for 9.3% of the
variability in the test scores. There was also main effect ofbackground sound, F(2, 109) ¼11.47, p<.001 ( R
2¼8.0%),
and a significant interaction between personality andbackground sound, F(2, 110) ¼6.08, p<.01 ( R
2¼4.2%).
Planned comparisons revealed that, as predicted, perform-ance in silence was significantly better than in the presence ofmusic ( p<.05) and performance in the presence of music
was significantly better than in the presence of noise
(p<.05). Simple effects analysis showed that in silence,
there was no effect of extraversion on performance, F<1
(b¼0.09). In both the music and noise conditions,
extraversion was a significant predictor of performance,F(1, 36) ¼20.00, p<.001 ( b¼0.59, R
2¼25.3%) and F(1,
42)¼79.45, p<.001 ( b¼0.74, R2¼52.2%), respectively.
The fitted regression lines under the three conditions are
presented in Figure 1.
The Wonderlic Personnel test
One outlier (standardised residual >3.0) was removed prior
to analysis. A significant main effect of extraversion wasfound, F(1, 110) ¼62.37, p<.001 ( R
2¼14.8%), and there
was also a main effect of background sound, F(2,
110)¼33.28, p<.001 ( R2¼15.8%). There was again a
significant interaction between personality and backgroundsound, F(2,110) ¼5.07, p<.01 ( R
2¼2.4%). Planned
comparisons revealed that performance in both silenceand music was significantly better than in the presence ofnoise ( p<.001) but performance in the presence of silencewas not significantly different from performance in the
presence of music ( p¼.76). Simple effects analysis showed
that extraversion was a significant predictor of performance
in all three background sound conditions: Silence, F(1,
42)¼7.07, p<.05 ( b¼0.28, R
2¼7.1%); music, F(1,
29)¼16.60, p<.001 ( b¼0.50, R2¼19.0%) and noise,
F(1, 37) ¼128.89, p<.001 ( b¼0.90, R2¼58.7%). The
fitted regression lines for the three conditions are presentedin Figure 2.
Test of verbal reasoning
The analysis revealed a main effect of extraversion, F(1,
111)¼5.04, p<.05 ( R
2¼2.2%), and background sound,
F(2, 111) ¼5.13, p<.01 ( R2¼4.4%). There was also a
significant interaction between personality and backgroundsound, F(2, 111) ¼5.38, p<.001 ( R
2¼4.6%). Planned
comparisons revealed that performance in silence was
significantly better than with music ( p<.01) and just failed
to be significantly better than with noise ( p¼.06). There was
no significant difference between performance under themusic and noise conditions ( p¼.15). Simple effects analysis
showed that extraversion was a weak but significant predictor
of performance in silence, F(1, 37) ¼4.10, p<.05 (b¼0.29,
R
2¼5.9%) and a strong predictor in noise, F(1, 29) ¼79.23,
p<.001 ( b¼0.77, R2¼44.3%). There was no effect of
extraversion in the music condition, F<1(b¼/C00.02). The
fitted regression lines for the three conditions are presentedin Figure 3.
DISCUSSION
The results for the Raven’s matrices test were precisely as
predicted; performance in silence was better than with music,
which in turn was better than performance in conditions of
simulated office noise. On the Wonderlic test, performance in
Extraversion ScoreRaven's Test Performance
20 18 16 14 12 10 8 630
25
20
15
10Condition
SilenceMusic
Noise
Figure 1. Fitted regression lines (controlling for IQ) for Raven’s test performance as a function of extraversion under the three background
sound conditions
Copyright #2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Appl. Cognit. Psychol. 25: 307–313 (2011)310 S. Dobbs et al.

silence and music was better than in noise, but performance
in silence and music did not differ. On the verbal reasoning
test, performance in silence was better than in noise, and withmusic performance was marginally better than in noise; butperformance in silence was no better than with music. Thus
performance in silence was superior to performance insimulated office noise; relative to silence, performance withbackground music was test-dependent.
Turning to the second hypothesis, there was either no
relationship (Ravens) or a very weak relationship (Wonderlic
and verbal reasoning) between test performance andextraversion when the tests were taken in silence. However,when the same tests were taken in the presence of noise, there
was a strong positive relationship between performance and
extraversion. Under noisy conditions, the performance ofextreme extraverts was essentially unaffected, but increase inintroversion was associated with a systematic decrease intest performance—with extreme introverts being markedlyaffected. The results under conditions of music were slightlyless clear cut; whilst performance on Ravens and Wonderlic
was positively related to extraversion (although the
relationship was considerably weaker than in conditions
of office noise) there was no relationship between extraver-sion and performance on the verbal reasoning test.Figure 2. Fitted regression lines (controlling for IQ) for Wonderlic test performance as a function of extraversion under the three background
sound conditions
Extraversion ScoreVerbal Reasoning Test Performance
20 18 16 14 12 10 8 630
25
20
15
10Condition
SilenceMusic
Noise
Figure 3. Fitted regression lines (controlling for IQ) for verbal reasoning test performance as a function of extraversion under the three
background sound conditions
Copyright #2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Appl. Cognit. Psychol. 25: 307–313 (2011)Background noise and test performance 311

These results support previous findings that have found a
significant difference between introvert’s and extravert’s
performance in the presence of background music (Cassidy
& MacDonald, 2007; Furnham & Allass, 1999; Furnham &Bradley, 1997; Furnham and Strabc, 2002).
The results indicate that for the Wonderlic and ravens task
this was indeed the case, overall performance was best insilence compared to background sound. Analysis of boththese tasks indicated that background music and noisesignificantly worsened performance when compared to
silence, as predicted; music and noise were also significantly
different from one another, working in the presence of noisebeing most detrimental to performance. This was not the casewith the third task; in the verbal reasoning test, music andnoise were not significantly different from each other andparticipants performed best in the music condition whencompared to silence, those performance was still at its worstin the presence of noise.
What are the possible explanations why the verbal
reasoning task did not obtain significant results in thepredicted direction? It could be argued that the WonderlicPersonnel task and Ravens test of arithmetic were morecognitively complex than the verbal task. Research hasindicated that there may only be a negative effect ofbackground music and noise on complex cognitive tasks(Beaman, 2005; Smith, 1961, Evans & Johnson, 2000). Thus,
if the task was not complex enough then this may not have
had enough effect to exceed introverts beyond their optimumfunctioning level and thus produce a differential distractionof background music and noise on the cognitive testperformance of introverts and extraverts.
Previous research has consistently indicated the detri-
mental effect of noise on individual’s performance oncomplex cognitive tasks (Banbury & Berry, 1998; Beaman,
2005). There has been less unequivocal research on the
negative effects of music on complex task performance. Forexample, Furnham and Bradley (1997) indicated a maineffect for background sound on an immediate recall task butnot on a reading comprehension task. Smith (1961) found nobeneficial or detrimental effect of background music on tasksrequiring complex cognitive activity. The discrepancy in the
results of different experiments may be because of
differences in the complexity of the music. However,
Furnham and Allass (1999) found no effect on the cognitiveperformance when using silence, simple and complex music.
Background music and noise are both examples of
background sound, what are the possible explanations forwhy performance was worse in the presence of noise whencompared to silence? Noise and music my have equally
distracting effects but cause quite different affective
reactions. It also depends inevitably on the very nature of
the music and the sound itself. Music that is most distractingis fast, familiar, vocal music that is most often known by,chosen and liked by the user (Furnham et al., 1999;Hargreaves and North, 1997). Indeed it is often chosen to bedistracting (to take away from the repetitive nature of the taskat hand) or to have a beneficial effect on mood.
That is, self-selected, familiar and personally liked music
may be sought by people as a distraction to cope with pain
(Mitchell et al., 2007; Pothoulaki et al., 2008) or to increasearousal in fast computer games. It has even been described as
a ‘audioanalgesic’ (Mitchell et al., 2007).
Noise that is distracting is nearly always annoying because
it is unpredictable and uncontrollable and interferes with animportant task. Presumably no one chooses to work in thepresence of noise, although they do so in the presence of
music. Music plays a meaningful social and emotional role,
so may be assigned an ‘emotional’ as well as a ‘musical’meaning. It may be suggested that students are highly attunedto emotional arousal and meaningful messaging, and so may
be less distracted by music than other potential population or,
conversely, more distracted due to increased personal interestand affiliation with social messaging of popular music.Indeed recent studies on uses of music has shown thatextraverts use music for stimulation whilst neurotics use itfor emotional regulation (Chamorro-Premuzic et al., 2009).
This study found a positive correlation between extra-
version and IQ, suggesting the relationship between
intelligence and extraversion may be a bit more complex
than it appears at first sight. Subsequent results showed thathaving controlled for IQ the hypothesis that performance forall participants should be similar in silence prevails. Whencontrolling for intelligence, degree of extraversion is nolonger a main effect of performance for Ravens progressivematrices, but continues to be in the presence of backgroundsound (music and noise). The same pattern of results was
found for the Wonderlic and the Verbal tests though non-
significant. It would seem that performance on these tests isgreatest with greater intellectual ability and degree ofextraversion, both of which may not be independenttheoretically as Eysenck (1971) suggested.
A review of the literature bearing on the relationship
between extraversion and intelligence yields unequivocalresults. Robinson (1985) provided data indicating that
extraversion and introversion are intimately associated with
different intellectual styles and intelligence profiles, but notwith absolute levels of performance on intelligence tests.Accordingly, introverts and extraverts were found not todiffer in overall IQ, only on profile: Introverts were found toperform relatively better on verbal tests, and extraverts onperformance tests.
The study has yielded robust findings, not only to students
and those who wish to maximise their learning potential,
study environments and services, but also those interested ininvestigating the effects of everyday music listening on ourbehavioural state. The study has highlighted the detrimentaleffect of sound (music and noise) on task performance, incomparison to silence. A wide range of factors should betaken into account when investigating the effects of music onbehavioural states. These include musical environment,
psychological and social factors and other personality
correlates, which may be inextricably linked. The replic-ability of these findings depends on the nature of the task andthe nature of the distracter as well as the personality of theparticipants.
Future studies may help understand these issues better if
they used a wider age population group, and used differentkinds of music. Moreover, it would have been better to have
different types of noise (i.e. just irrelevant speech vs.
machine sounds) and the loudness was measured and perhaps
Copyright #2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Appl. Cognit. Psychol. 25: 307–313 (2011)312 S. Dobbs et al.

varied to examine its effects on performance. What is most
desirable in this research area is to supplement experimental
research with studies done in naturalistic settings noting how,
when and why people use distractions in their everyday life.
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