Have the subjects fill out a form with background information. These questions: What genre of music do you usually listen to? Do you listen to music when you study? If so, what genre? Do you have ADHD? If so, are you medicated?
Find a quiet room
Set up 1 group 50 math problems of the same level. Create more groups depending on how many genres of music are being tested. Write the name of the subjects on the paper as well as the genre of music you will be testing. Make sure to switch up the order of the math problems as well as the music order.
Play the chosen music while simultaneously starting a stopwatch.
Once the subject is done, they will shout “done”. Immediately stop the stopwatch.
Record time on the paper.
Repeat steps 3 to 5 until finished with all genres of music.
Keep the papers until after grading for accuracy.
From my research, I found that music can be helpful for people in many different ways. It can be used as a way to tune out other sounds. With just one type of music playing, the brain focuses on one thing without distractions. Additionally, listening to music causes the brian to release dopamine. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that has calming effects on the body. Dopamine improves mood, which helps the brain focus. An unhappy, stressed person is more likely to make frantic and careless mistakes, and music calms the brain. Furthermore, people with ADHD have trouble focussing as well as a lack of dopamine. This makes music a great study tool as it increases dopamine as well as improves concentration.
After researching, I decided to test if music really helps students, especially girls with ADHD. I had 10th grade girls, with and without ADHD complete math problems while listening to different types of music. I graded for accuracy and speed. For girls without ADHD, ambient resulted in the most accurate and second fastest work. For girls with ADHD, ambient music had both the most accurate and fastest math problems. After testing, I can conclude that ambient music is overall the best study music.