How Does Music and Sounds Effect Thinking

For my experiment, I was curious to find out which type of music and/or sound was helpful in concentrating on a task, whether it was writing or reading,etc. I hypothesized that classical and pop would be most helpful or less distracting, and for sounds I thought that the windchimes would be peaceful so easy to work with because its also soothing.

To get started with my experiment I chose 5 songs and 5 sounds to put on a CD. I had 7 people listen to each CD while completing a homework assignment. Next, each will complete a filling chart stating the songs that were good or helpful, then they fill out saying what songs were harmful.After that I will calculate and get an average. Lastly they will repeat the test.

For my data I have collected I calculated that 4 people like having no music, no one likes rock, 2 people thought that jazz was helpful, 3 for classical, 4 for pop, and none for country. for bad results 4 people for country, 1 for classical, 1 for jazz, 2 for pop, 5 for rock, and 0 for none. for good results on sound effects (sfx), 3 for none 4 for birds chirping, 5 chimes, and 0 baby, and 1 for wolves. Lastly, for bad sfx, people choose 0 for none, 4 for traffic, 0 for birds chirping, 6 for baby crying, 2 for wolves, and 0 for wind chimes.

In conclusion country wasn't really any helpful but music doesn't seem to help if its a type of music that that person doesn't like. yes my hypothesis was correct about the none for both because it could have been really distracting to the person that was trying to complete the assignment while listening to music and sfx. One way I could have made this expeirnment better, was create an assignment for every one.

Conclusion: In conclusion I saw a big difference in sounds that I thought were bad and good, for instance for bad baby crying got 6 votes and for good baby it got 0 votes. The bad votes for none were 0, traffic 4, birds chirping 0, baby crying was 6, wolves howling was 2, and chimes was 0. for good results I got 3 none, 4 birds, 5 chimes, 0 baby, and 1 wolves. for music, goog votes,none 4, rock0, pop 4, jazz 2, classical 3, country 0. For bad results, country got the 2nd highest with, 4, classic 1, jazz 1. overall the results were what i had expected them to be.