Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

which kind of music helps you concentrate better; Hip-Hop music or classical music? Why?

Hi,
That's an interesting question! For me personally, I am sure it is the classical music, as I seem to enjoy that more and it often has slower movement through the songs (although not always).

Were you going to design a test to generate data to answer your question?

Please let me know if you have further questions or need more help.

Tonya

hi Tonya! yeah.. i kinda need help
i want more information to prove my hypothesis that classical music does help you concentrate better. i also need some research or facts on why, personlaly, do people concentrate more with this kind of music. i noe this is alot of stuff to cover... (:
BTW i dont understand your question...

Were you going to design a test to generate data to answer your question?

can you please explain it more?? thanks a whole bunch!

Hi nATALIEoLAYA,

Since you have a hypothesis identified, I'm guessing you are looking to conduct an experiment for a class to prove or disprove that hypothesis. Conducting research is very important and will help inform your experiment design but alone will not prove/disprove your hypothesis. It will only tell you what someone else has discovered about your topic. If you are looking to determine which music type helps concentration, I would suggest something along the lines of the following:

1) Get 5 to 10 individuals to agree to take part in your experiment. It would be benificial to ensure they were from different age groups (i.e. young to old). The more people you have the larger your sample size is and the more you eliminate individual traits and preferences as a limiting factor.
2) Without any music or distration, have each person perform a series of tasks designed to identify their level of concentration, like solving various math, logic puzzles, trivia questions, memory exercises, etc... This would be your control group.
3) With classical music set to a certain volume, have each person perform similar (but not the exact same) tasks, you want to eliminate task memorization as a factor.
4) With hip-hop music set to the same volume as the classical music, have each person perform similar but not the same tasks as the other 2 times.
5) record how well, how fast, and/or accurate each person did on the tests in each of the 3 trials and see if there is a correlation between the scores without music, with classical, or with hip-hop music.

Note, each person in your trial should be listening to the same lineup of music at the same volume settings.

This is just a suggestion for the start of an experiment design, much more thought needs to be put into it to ensure it tests all required aspects of the topic.

Hope this helps,
theborg

nATALIEoLAYA wrote:hi Tonya! yeah.. i kinda need help
i want more information to prove my hypothesis that classical music does help you concentrate better. i also need some research or facts on why, personlaly, do people concentrate more with this kind of music. i noe this is alot of stuff to cover... (:
BTW i dont understand your question...

Were you going to design a test to generate data to answer your question?

can you please explain it more?? thanks a whole bunch!

Hi again,
theborg actually did an excellent job answering the question for me. He gave an experiment that would generate data to support your hypothesis.

Tonya

thanks theborg and tonya! that helped me alot but i want to know why scientifically why does, hip hop or classical music, help you concentrate better? and WHY?

Hi again,

I am glad you are finding this forum helpful! I looked for a little more information for you and was surprised what I found...

I have some links below for you to look at. In summary:

1. Music can improve mood, which helps focus.
2. Music causes the creative section of your brain to count the beats, which keeps it occupied while you use the other parts of your brain for study and deeper thought.
2. Music can help relax you and lower stress, allowing you to concentrate better.

http://www.pickthebrain.com/blog/focus- ... -to-music/
http://uncc49er.com/622/music-can-help-you-study/

You may find more pages to read... I used Google to search the words "why does music help you concentrate better".

Good luck!

Tonya

Tonya found some interesting info. I think as to why music helps concentration is a question of how the brain processes information. We can see from research done that there is a correlation between music type and concentration. The question you could ask yourself for research or further experimentation is what is it about the music that helps? From the above post, I wonder, is it the beat, tempo, instruments used, words or not? Tons of others for continued work.

It has to do with multitasking. The same parts of your brain are used when you are listening to music with lyrics and when you are reading or doing anything with language, and there is no such thing as multitasking, so it makes it harder to concentrate. There are no lyrics in classical music, so you aren't distracted because you are using two parts of your brain for two different things.