Abstract

Studying with music playing is a familiar habit, yet the experimental literature on its cognitive effects is heterogeneous. This review appraises twelve peer-reviewed sources (five systematic or meta-analytic syntheses and seven controlled experiments) located through Novanet, the discovery service of Dalhousie University Libraries, and the OpenAlex index, and screened with the CRAAP test. The syntheses converge on one robust result: background music, lyrical music in particular, impairs reading comprehension and verbal memory, with small average effects (Kämpfe et al., 2011; Vasilev et al., 2018; Cheah et al., 2022). A recent meta-analysis of learning outcomes reports a small positive mean effect (d = 0.314), drawn from a pool that includes unpublished work (de la Mora Velasco et al., 2023). Experimental studies identify the moderators that reconcile these findings: the semantic content of the music, its tempo and intensity, the complexity of the task, and the listener's preference for external stimulation. The evidence supports silence or quiet instrumental music for reading and memorisation, and allows music as an arousal and mood regulator for simple tasks.

1. Introduction

Two intuitions about studying with music compete. The first holds that music improves mood and sustains effort through long sessions. The second, grounded in cognitive psychology, holds that structured sound competes with the task for limited attentional and working-memory resources. Each has empirical support, and successive reviews have described the field as inconsistent (Kämpfe et al., 2011; de la Mora Velasco & Hirumi, 2020).

This review addresses a narrower question: under which conditions does background music help or harm the cognitive operations that studying depends on, chiefly reading comprehension, verbal memory and complex problem solving? Effect sizes and limitations are reported as the original authors state them.

2. Method

2.1 Search strategy

Searches were run in October 2026 in Novanet and in OpenAlex, an open bibliographic index. Search strings combined "background music" or "music" with "reading comprehension", "memory", "learning", "cognitive performance" and "study". Reference lists of included reviews were then searched for primary experiments.

2.2 Eligibility criteria

Sources were included when they (a) appeared in a peer-reviewed journal, (b) reported a controlled experiment or a systematic or meta-analytic synthesis, (c) measured an outcome relevant to studying (reading, memory, learning or cognitive task performance), and (d) tested non-clinical participants. Popular press, preprints, theses, music-therapy trials and studies of musical training were excluded. One recent meta-analysis (Liu, 2026) was screened and excluded because it pooled routine listening with structured music-based interventions in partly clinical samples, which falls outside the review question.

2.3 Appraisal with the CRAAP test

Each source was appraised on the five CRAAP criteria. Currency weighed publication date against later work on the same question; older experiments were retained when they remain the reference demonstration of a mechanism. Relevance assessed how closely the task resembles studying. Authority required publication in a peer-reviewed journal, confirmed through Novanet's peer-review flag where the record was indexed there. Accuracy examined design (control condition, counterbalancing or random assignment), sample size, the statistics reported, and whether conclusions stay within the data. Purpose checked for an academic aim and the absence of a commercial interest in a music product. Full text was read for Perham and Currie (2014); for the other sources, data were extracted from the published abstracts and bibliographic records.

2.4 Appraisal results

Source	Design	Appraisal notes	Decision
Kämpfe et al. (2011)	Meta-analysis	Authoritative but partly superseded; the authors report that few studies permitted effect-size calculation.	Included
Vasilev et al. (2018)	Bayesian meta-analysis, 65 studies	Highly relevant to reading; meta-regression tests predictions derived from theory.	Included
Cheah et al. (2022)	Systematic review, 95 articles, 154 experiments	Current and broad; vote counting by direction of effect gives no pooled magnitude.	Included for direction only
de la Mora Velasco & Hirumi (2020)	Systematic review, 30 studies	Relevant to learning; descriptive frequencies only.	Included
de la Mora Velasco et al. (2023)	Meta-analysis, 71 effects from 47 studies	Current; the pool includes dissertations and conference proceedings, which lowers accuracy.	Included with caveat
Salamé & Baddeley (1989)	Three experiments	Dated but foundational; serial recall of digits is a narrow proxy for study.	Included as mechanism
Furnham & Bradley (1997)	Experiment, n = 20	Relevant tasks; very small sample.	Included, low weight
Husain et al. (2002)	Experiment	Music heard before a spatial task; relevant to mechanism rather than to reading.	Included as mechanism
Thompson et al. (2012)	Experiment, n = 25 with silent controls	Reading comprehension; instrumental music only.	Included
Johansson et al. (2012)	Experiment with eye tracking, n = 24	Self-selected study music; small sample.	Included
Perham & Currie (2014)	Within-subjects experiment, n = 30	Reading comprehension; liked and disliked lyrical music compared directly.	Included
Gonzalez & Aiello (2019)	Laboratory experiment	Tests task, music and person characteristics together.	Included
Liu (2026)	Meta-analysis, 32 studies	Current and peer reviewed; mixes interventions and clinical samples.	Excluded on relevance

3. Findings

3.1 Where the syntheses agree

Kämpfe et al. (2011) found a global null effect of background music, which they attribute to specific effects of opposite sign cancelling out. Compared with no music, background music disturbed reading and had small detrimental effects on memory, while it improved emotional reactions and sports performance. Vasilev et al. (2018) pooled 65 studies of reading and found that noise, speech and music each have a small but reliably detrimental effect on reading performance. Intelligible speech and lyrical music produced the largest disruption, and the size of the effect did not generally differ between adults and children. Cheah et al. (2022) reviewed 154 experiments and, counting the direction of effects, found detrimental effects on memory and language tasks, larger costs for music with lyrics than for instrumental music, and no effect in most comparisons. Only one positive effect appeared, for instrumental music. The same review found costs on difficult tasks but not easy ones, and for introverts but not extraverts.

3.2 A dissenting estimate

The most recent meta-analysis reaches a different conclusion. Pooling 71 effect sizes from 47 experimental and quasi-experimental studies published up to 2021, de la Mora Velasco et al. (2023) report a small positive mean effect in favour of background music (d = 0.314), a medium positive effect in studies that, in the authors' words, implemented background music before the learning assessment, and small positive effects for factual knowledge retention and for classical music relative to other genres. They argue that the result challenges cognitive load accounts that discourage music during instruction. Two features limit the weight this estimate can carry here. The pool includes dissertations and conference proceedings, which have not passed journal peer review. The outcome is learning measured after instruction, which differs from the moment-to-moment comprehension that the reading studies measure. The same group's earlier review of the 2008 to 2018 literature judged the findings inconclusive and called for more rigorous methods (de la Mora Velasco & Hirumi, 2020).

3.3 Semantic content: why lyrics matter

Salamé and Baddeley (1989) asked participants to recall sequences of nine visually presented digits in order. In their first experiment both vocal and instrumental music disrupted recall, with vocal music more disruptive. With more practised participants, vocal music again caused significantly more disruption, and instrumental music was not significantly worse than silence. Noise modulated in amplitude like speech did not differ from silence. The authors interpret the pattern in terms of a phonological short-term store that speech-like sound gains access to.

Perham and Currie (2014) tested 30 participants on reading comprehension in quiet, with liked lyrical music, with disliked lyrical music, and with non-lyrical music. Sound condition had a significant effect, F(3, 87) = 8.05, η² = .22. Performance in quiet exceeded performance with disliked lyrical music (η² = .37) and with liked lyrical music (η² = .26). Quiet and non-lyrical music did not differ, and neither did liked and disliked lyrical music. Liking the song did not offset the cost of its lyrics. This agrees with the meta-regression in Vasilev et al. (2018), where lyrical music produced the largest disruption.

Johansson et al. (2012) offer a partial contrast. Twenty-four students read texts while hearing music they preferred for studying, music they did not prefer, recorded café noise, or silence. Comprehension was significantly lower only for non-preferred music compared with silence, and no condition changed standard eye-movement measures. The published abstract does not specify whether the preferred music had lyrics, so the result cannot be reconciled with Perham and Currie on that dimension. The authors suggest that readers do not notice the disruption and therefore do not adjust their reading to compensate.

3.4 Tempo, intensity and arousal

Husain et al. (2002) edited a Mozart sonata to vary tempo and mode, played one version to each participant, and then measured spatial ability, arousal and mood. Fast tempo and major mode produced better spatial performance. Tempo changed arousal without changing mood, and mode changed mood without changing arousal, a pattern the authors read as evidence that the so-called Mozart effect follows from changes in arousal and mood. Thompson et al. (2012) applied the same logic to reading. Participants read passages with instrumental music at two tempi and two intensities. Only the fast and loud condition reduced comprehension significantly below the silent baseline.

3.5 Task complexity and the listener

Gonzalez and Aiello (2019) varied music complexity and volume across simple and complex cognitive tasks. Music generally impaired complex task performance, complex music facilitated simple task performance, and a person's preference for external stimulation moderated both effects. Individual differences appear earlier in Furnham and Bradley (1997): pop music impaired immediate recall for introverts and extraverts alike, while introverts who studied with music showed lower delayed recall and lower reading comprehension. With ten participants per group, that study is best treated as a hypothesis that the larger review by Cheah et al. (2022) later supported.

4. Discussion

4.1 Two mechanisms of opposite sign

The findings fit a model with two routes. Through an arousal and mood route, music can raise readiness for a task, as Husain et al. (2002) showed when music preceded the task. Through an interference route, structured sound and above all intelligible language compete with verbal processing (Salamé & Baddeley, 1989; Vasilev et al., 2018). The net effect depends on how much the task relies on verbal working memory and how much stimulation the listener seeks. This accounts for the coexistence of a near-zero global effect (Kämpfe et al., 2011), a small positive effect on learning outcomes (de la Mora Velasco et al., 2023), and a reliable cost for reading (Vasilev et al., 2018). The three syntheses average over different mixtures of tasks and timings.

4.2 Limitations of the evidence base

Several experiments rest on small samples (n = 20 to 30). Reading tasks are short, for example four minutes per passage in Thompson et al. (2012), whereas real study sessions last hours, so habituation and fatigue are untested. Music is often chosen by the researchers, which separates the manipulation from how students select music. Two of the syntheses aggregate in ways that limit inference: Cheah et al. (2022) count directions without magnitudes, and de la Mora Velasco et al. (2023) pool outcomes that include unpublished studies.

5. Practical implications

The recommendations below are graded by the strength of the evidence behind them.

Reading dense text or memorising verbal material: prefer silence, and avoid lyrics. This holds even for well-liked songs (Perham & Currie, 2014) and is supported by the meta-analytic evidence on reading (Vasilev et al., 2018). Strength: consistent across syntheses.
If music is used during such tasks, choose quiet instrumental music at a moderate tempo. Fast and loud music is the condition that measurably reduced comprehension (Thompson et al., 2012). Strength: moderate.
Simple or repetitive work, such as formatting notes or sorting files, tolerates music better, particularly for people who seek external stimulation (Gonzalez & Aiello, 2019). Strength: a single experiment.
Music before a session can be used to raise arousal and mood without competing with the task itself (Husain et al., 2002). Strength: laboratory evidence on a spatial task.
Test it on yourself rather than trusting the impression. Because disruption may go unnoticed (Johansson et al., 2012), compare comprehension on similar material with and without music.

In practice, this suggests matching sound to the type of study block. A session plan that separates reading and memorisation from mechanical tasks makes the distinction easy to apply; the guide to breaking a task into steps describes how to split a study session into blocks of that kind.

6. Limitations of this review

This is a narrative review with structured appraisal. It was not preregistered, a single reviewer conducted screening and appraisal, only English-language sources were searched, and publication bias was not assessed. For most sources, data were taken from published abstracts and bibliographic records, so moderators reported only in full texts may be missing.

7. Conclusion

The peer-reviewed evidence supports only a conditional claim about background music and study. Music with intelligible lyrics, and fast, loud music of any kind, reliably reduces reading comprehension and verbal memory. Quiet instrumental music has costs that are small or undetectable in several experiments. Music may help with simple tasks and before a session, through its effect on arousal and mood. The open questions concern long sessions, self-selected music and individual differences, and they call for larger preregistered experiments.

Frequently asked questions

Is it bad to study with music?

It depends on the task. For reading and memorising, the evidence favours silence or quiet instrumental music. For simple, repetitive tasks, music causes fewer problems and may help some people stay engaged.

Is lo-fi or classical music better for studying?

The research tests features of music, not playlist labels. Music without lyrics, at moderate tempo and low volume, carries the lowest measured cost for reading. One meta-analysis found a small advantage for classical music in learning outcomes (de la Mora Velasco et al., 2023).

Does music I like help me concentrate?

Liking a song did not protect reading comprehension when the song had lyrics (Perham & Currie, 2014). In that study, the presence of lyrics mattered more than preference.

Does the Mozart effect exist?

Husain et al. (2002) found that tempo and mode changed arousal and mood, and that spatial performance followed those changes. The authors conclude that the effect is a consequence of arousal and mood.

References

Cheah, Y., Wong, H. K., Spitzer, M., & Coutinho, E. (2022). Background music and cognitive task performance: A systematic review of task, music, and population impact. Music & Science, 5. https://doi.org/10.1177/20592043221134392
de la Mora Velasco, E., Chen, Y.-T., Hirumi, A., & Bai, H. (2023). The impact of background music on learners: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Psychology of Music, 51(6), 1598-1626. https://doi.org/10.1177/03057356231153070
de la Mora Velasco, E., & Hirumi, A. (2020). The effects of background music on learning: A systematic review of literature to guide future research and practice. Educational Technology Research and Development, 68(6), 2817-2837. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11423-020-09783-4
Furnham, A., & Bradley, A. (1997). Music while you work: The differential distraction of background music on the cognitive test performance of introverts and extraverts. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 11(5), 445-455. https://doi.org/10.1002/(SICI)1099-0720(199710)11:5<445::AID-ACP472>3.0.CO;2-R
Gonzalez, M. F., & Aiello, J. R. (2019). More than meets the ear: Investigating how music affects cognitive task performance. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 25(3), 431-444. https://doi.org/10.1037/xap0000202
Husain, G., Thompson, W. F., & Schellenberg, E. G. (2002). Effects of musical tempo and mode on arousal, mood, and spatial abilities. Music Perception, 20(2), 151-171. https://doi.org/10.1525/mp.2002.20.2.151
Johansson, R., Holmqvist, K., Mossberg, F., & Lindgren, M. P. (2012). Eye movements and reading comprehension while listening to preferred and non-preferred study music. Psychology of Music, 40(3), 339-356. https://doi.org/10.1177/0305735610387777
Kämpfe, J., Sedlmeier, P., & Renkewitz, F. (2011). The impact of background music on adult listeners: A meta-analysis. Psychology of Music, 39(4), 424-448. https://doi.org/10.1177/0305735610376261
Liu, L. (2026). Psychological effects of music listening habits on emotional wellbeing and cognitive performance in adults: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Frontiers in Psychology, 17, Article 1846437. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1846437 (screened and excluded)
Perham, N., & Currie, H. (2014). Does listening to preferred music improve reading comprehension performance? Applied Cognitive Psychology, 28(2), 279-284. https://doi.org/10.1002/acp.2994
Salamé, P., & Baddeley, A. (1989). Effects of background music on phonological short-term memory. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology Section A, 41(1), 107-122. https://doi.org/10.1080/14640748908402355
Thompson, W. F., Schellenberg, E. G., & Letnic, A. K. (2012). Fast and loud background music disrupts reading comprehension. Psychology of Music, 40(6), 700-708. https://doi.org/10.1177/0305735611400173
Vasilev, M. R., Kirkby, J. A., & Angele, B. (2018). Auditory distraction during reading: A Bayesian meta-analysis of a continuing controversy. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 13(5), 567-597. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691617747398

Conflict of interest: the author is a co-founder of Flowo, a planning app. None of the studies cited was funded by or connected to Flowo.

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Does Background Music Help You Study? A Critical Review of the Peer-Reviewed Evidence