ArticlePsychological research2021
The effect of preferred background music on task-focus in sustained attention.
Article in Psychological research, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 24 papers.
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Who cites it
24 citing papers in PubMed.
- Lapses of attention.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2026Review
- Musical Episodic Modulation of Human Functioning: Anticipation Mechanisms, Personal Sense, and Emotional Recall.Integrative psychological & behavioral science · 2026Article
- Exploratory Listening Through Background Music: Psychological Predictors of Everyday Use.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- The impact of instrumental music on dual-task interference in a simulated driving environment.Psychological research · 2026Article
- Listening in a noisy world: The impact of acoustic cues and background music on speech perception in autism.Autism : the international journal of research and practice · 2026Article
- What you listen to makes a difference: The impact of music on attention and well-being.Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2025Article
- Sustained attention in attention-deficit subjects and the impact of binaural beat stimulation evaluated by behavior and EEG.Experimental brain research · 2025Article
- Blinking indexes dynamic attending during and after music listening.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Specific Rhythm Auditory Stimulation for Attention: A Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial.Clinical psychopharmacology and neuroscience : the official scientific journal of the Korean College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2025Article
- Harmonizing lecture slides presentations with background music: thematic analysis of students experiences.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- Musical auditory feedback BCI: clinical pilot study of the Encephalophone.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2025Article
- Article
- Music in the eye of the beholder: a pupillometric study on preferred background music, attentional state, and arousal.Psychological research · 2024Article
- The effects of music combined to paired associative stimulation on motor-evoked potentials and alertness in spinal cord injury patients and healthy subjects.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- The role of mood and arousal in the effect of background music on attentional state and performance during a sustained attention task.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Study on the Effect ofMolecules (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- The Effect of Musical Environments on Designers' Attention: Persistent Music Listening Interferes with Attention.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Exploring the influence of music on cognitive performance in female assembly line workers at a medical device manufacturing unit.PloS one · 2024Article
- The effects of self-selected background music and task difficulty on task engagement and performance in a visual vigilance task.Psychological research · 2023Article
- The effect of background sounds on mind wandering.Psychological research · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Although many people listen to music while performing tasks that require sustained attention, the literature is inconclusive about its effects. The present study examined performance on a sustained-attention task and explored the effect of background music on the prevalence of different attentional states, founded on the non-linear relationship between arousal and performance. Forty students completed a variation of the Psychomotor Vigilance Task-that has long been used to measure sustained attention-in silence and with their self-selected or preferred music in the background. We collected subjective reports of attentional state (specifically mind-wandering, task-focus and external distraction states) as well as reaction time (RT) measures of performance. Results indicated that background music increased the proportion of task-focus states by decreasing mind-wandering states but did not affect external distraction states. Task-focus states were linked to shorter RTs than mind-wandering or external distraction states; however, background music did not reduce RT or variability of RT significantly compared to silence. These findings show for the first time that preferred background music can enhance task-focused attentional states on a low-demanding sustained-attention task and are compatible with arousal mediating the relationship between background music and task-performance.
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