Study, music and comprehension

Students often listen music during study. In recent times, the music listening behaviour is getting popular day by day thanks to advent of gadgets especially the all-in-one smartphones. The author of this paper attempted to find the effects of music when listened during study on the comprehension of the students. For this purpose, a number of studies, after scanning through title and/or abstract have been analysed. Basically, studies were undertaken for measuring and comparing the effects of three types of musical conditions. The musical conditions were (i) instrumental music, (ii) lyrical music and (iii) no music (silent condition). At last, it was found that instrumental music, when listened during reading, has significant positive effect on comprehension. But, no significant difference found between the effects of lyrical music, when listened during reading, and no music on comprehension. Also, the effect of music was found contingent upon the nature of study material. Some recommendations have also been made on the basis of results.