Background Music, Task Performance and Working Memory
A scientific research project on how self selected background music impacts users short-term memory and task performance using EEG brain signals
Background
This project was part of my doctorate studies to publish at a scientific journal. We targeted students, and office employees who tend to work with background music and analyze how it impacts their working memory and work/task performance
Research Goals
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Quantifying and analyzing the effects of background music on task performance and working memory
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Implementing a task that can successfully address the research questions
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Delivering a concrete objective feedback on a topic that can be highly subjective
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Quantifying the effect of music with quantitative research methods in addition to qualitative research methods.
Research Questions
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Can music mood be categorized into different background music conditions?
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Can the effects of music mood and background music be quantified?
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What background music condition can enhance our focus, working memory and task performance?
To deliver answers to these questions, I conducted scientific research
My Role
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Planning
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Recruiting
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Conducting Experiments
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Analysis
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Presentation
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Brain Signals using EEG
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Questionnaire and Surveys
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24 Participants
RESEARCH PROCESS AND CHALLENGES
How can we quantify and objectively analyze something so subjective?
The main goal of this research is to contribute to existing literature, answering some of the additional questions past research might have failed to answer. Finding the gap in the literature, and contributing to the past studies with a unique approach. To achieve that we need to go above and beyond!
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Interviewing some of the office employees and students around the campus have provided some valuable ideas on how to effectively carry out this research
Individual Interviews
User interviews were really helpful to pinpoint some of the crucial parts of the experiment design. It showed the subjectiveness of background music, and how differently it impacts each individual.
These interviews highlighted one of the lacking elements of past research; music studies are very difficult to approach by strict categorizations based on types and genre.
Two individuals are never the same and the feelings they will feel from the same types of music can be fully different.
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Some music might be very relaxing and motivational to some but it can be very irritating and annoying to some others.
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Comments raised during the interviews pointed this out clearly;
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I can only focus on what I am working on with Classical Music
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I can't stand listening classical music
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Instrumental music makes me sleepy and i can not focus
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I like listening relaxing music while studying
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Music helps me focus but only instrumental music
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Improving the Past Research, the Gap
Detailed literature review has provided some valuable insight and helped us identifying the gap in past research, which is summarized below using affinity maps to clearly and successfully nail down the experiment design
Literature Review Highlights:
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Contradicting findings; effect of music has had various good or bad effects on individuals' focus, memory and task performance.
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Due to lack of quantitative measures and biometric measures; research in the past relied largely on user feedback which resulted in not having any significant continuous patterns.
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Effect of background music has solely been conducted around classification of musical genres,
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Categorization of the music has been done solely based on the type, such as classical, instrumental, rock, pop, etc.
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Effect of the music mood based on genre and types can be quite difficult to categorize since it is highly subjective.
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Previously implemented tasks lacked visual aspects either focusing too much on reading or memorization of numbers
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Some studies showed that background music improved mood, which enhanced motivation, and focus.
The Approach
Combination of literature review and user interviews led to the approach of “How about self selected music based on moods?”
Literature identifies that the most visible impact of background music is its effect on mood, so we decided to let participants choose their own background music. Self selected music ensures that the music assigned is the intended mood for each participant.
Participants selected their own background music conditions for relaxing and disliked music conditions
Participants Recruitment
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Students and office employees
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24 (16 males, 8 females) volunteers are participated in this study. The mean age was 28.4 and standard deviation was 5.4
Task
Deciding on the task is another very important section of this research. Based on literature review and similar research conducted in the past we have narrowed our task choices 3 options, and conducted some pilot tests with each task to get user feedback.
Since this experiment is targeting people with various backgrounds, it was important to recruit initial participants from different backgrounds and perspectives to decide on the final most suitable task for this research.
Digit Span task, Information Search Task, and Corsi Block Tapping tasks were the tasks that were evaluated by graphic design, engineering students and university office employee
Based on the feedback provided, we have selected Corsi Block tapping task to be used in our experiments.
The task has 9 blocks on screen, sequence of blocks lights up and participant must repeat and select the correct sequential order of boxes in the same order that is displayed. With each correct attempt, difficulty increases and if two mistakes made in a row, tasks end and displays the score participants earn
Experiment Procedure
Acquiring brain signals with EEG. EEG signals are acquired from 11 electrodes (F6, F5, Fz, Cz, Pz, P5, P6, O1, O2 sites)
Experiment is conducted in a quiet office setting with two monitors and regular headphones, monitors are used to prompt experiment procedure and conditions such as "rest", "start task now", "listening time"
RESULTS
Statistical Analysis
Some of the statistical analysis I conducted including but not limited to following methods;
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Average scores, mean values
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The standard deviation
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The %95 Confidence Interval
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Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) statistical test
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T-Tests to evaluate the mean values
Task Performance
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The scores in relaxing music condition were significantly higher than
disliked music and no music conditions. -
Listeners performed significantly better while listening to preferred relaxing music (p = 0.0151).
Cognitive Results
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Relaxing music showed a significant increase in relative Beta power spectrum density
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Significant effect of background music is detected on parietal alpha asymmetry. (p = 0.0097)
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Parietal alpha power lobe changes and asymmetry has been previously linked to memory retrieval process.
Summary
This study had some significant findings and identified major brain patterns of Alpha and Beta waves.
Relaxing music increased beta waves %2 compared to no music conditions
Participants who achieved highest scores showed some significant Alpha peaks on the right parietal lobe during relaxing music
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Relaxing music increased task performance %6 and %10 compared to disliked and no music conditions respectively
Not just qualitatively, also quantitatively the results of this research can lead to various machine learning and artificial intelligence applications
Research
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This researched focused on the effects of self-selected background music on working memory based cognitive performance.
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I as a lead researcher, conducted this research from ground up based on literature reviews, individual interviews and utilizing research tools and methodologies
Impact
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This researched is recognized and published by peer reviewed Human Computer Interactions Conference
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First to research effects of self- selected background music on task performance and working memory utilizing EEG.
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Major contributions to the literature with unique findings, especially regarding parietal alpha asymmetry and beta waves.
Takeaways
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Individual interviews in addition to literature review can really help on finding unique ways to improve the research and experiment design
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Usability testing and comparison of various tasks with pilot studies can really improve the research process and experiment design