For the past two months, we have developed an experiment, for a “20 Time Project” in our science class. The goal of the 20 time project was first displayed through’s google’s pact to their employees. Google wanted their employees to spend 20 percent of their time, doing what they enjoyed, and what they wanted to bring to Google’s variety of products. Some products that came out of this new philosophy were Google News, GMail and even AdSense, google’s highest grossing products.
Our science teacher replicated this, for the classroom, in which we got to design an experiment in which we were learning something about science, more specifically biology, while also having fun, and doing something that we were interested in. That’s why we chose to do an experiment about music, and how it can affect your neural performance - in layman’s terms, Can music help you study and learn the material better, and if so what type of music and at what volume?
I chose this experiment because as a student I always was interested in study tips and what can make you a better overall learner. There are numerous studies, that take many different stances on this topic - Some suggest that music enables you to create a pace to your studying, and even relaxes your brain making it more susceptible to understanding information. On the other hand, experts say that music can distract you from learning information and can be detrimental to your overall understanding of concepts.
With many differing views, I wanted to devise an experiment that would be able to tell which of these views were right, and also give me an idea of what music to listen to, in order to study. This would be able to benefit many students who were interested in learning how to study better. To see the results of what genres of music paired with what volumes improved/deterred studying, wait for our 20-time Write Up, coming soon.
We tested the main 4 genres of music, hip-hop, pop, classical and country, against 6 different brain factors: speed of processing, memory, attention, flexibility, problem-solving, and reaction time. Speed of processing was divided into 3 subdivisions, information processing, spatial reasoning, and visualization. Flexibility was split into task switching, response inhibition, and verbal fluency. Memory was divided into working memory and recall. Attention was divided into divided attention, selective attention and field of view. Problem-solving was split into reasoning, planning, and numerical calculation.
We decided to test this experiment while also having a little fun along the way, to make our experiment more desirable to participate in. Rather than taking tests or answering questions to determine improvement of performance, we decided to play games and look at cumulative scores to see whether music helped or hurt the subject’s performance. We did this through a subscription brain games model, called Lumosity. In each game, lumosity tested a number of different factors, including the speed in which the game was completed, the accuracy and other factors for each specific game.
In order to achieve the desired results for our experiment, we had to create a plan that would not take into account the subject’s own intelligence as a factor into what improves performance. This is why we had each subject play the brain game without any music to get a baseline score. From then on, every time the subject played a game while listening to music, we recorded the difference either positive or negative from their baseline score to determine the effect that music had.
Throughout the experiment, we executed our plan nearly flawlessly, with one main difficulty. Certain subjects that were either smarter or that appreciate different kinds of music were scoring differently based on these factors. We didn’t want a subject’s personal characteristics to affect our experiment’s results, so we had to figure out a way to test the subject's without taking into account how smart they were or what music they liked. Thus, we randomized the subject pool and had different subjects play the games each time, thus there would be no bias in the experiment to people that appreciate certain kinds of music, or subjects that were just simply smarter.With different subjects testing different parts of the experiment, we got results that purely indicated what effect the music had, and not other outlying factors.
One of the things we did really well, was finish testing, quickly and effectively. With 4 genres of music at three volumes, testing 16 different subdivisions, we needed to perform nearly 200 different tests to get all the results we needed. This was not a really easy task to do, especially with the time crunch we had, along with the restraints on class time we sometimes had.
Nevertheless, we were able to test both in class and outside of class, and do not have to cut down an experiment at all. In some cases, all of the types of music improved performance, in other cases only some improved music, and music did not help in only very few of the categories. The fact is, music mostly helps improve performance, given that you listen to the right kinds of music while doing the certain activities.
During this experiment, I was able to learn multiple skills, primarily working to finish an experiment with a partner. I am generally a person who likes to get everything right, especially when doing a project and sometimes fear that others involved might screw it up. Because I wanted to get better at overall collaborative work, I decided to work with a partner for this project. This decision was quite a risk as I didn’t know what working with a partner on such a big assignment might entail.
However, Justin has been a very supportive partner, and what we both share in common is our ability to get things done in an effective and timely manner. Because we both understood the experiment very well and loved the concept behind our testing, we were always on top of our working, making sure to meet deadlines in order to finish all the testing we needed by the end of the semester. Because of this, I was able to take a backseat in some other testing and need not worry about everything getting done perfectly.
Another soft skill that I learned through this endeavor was meeting deadlines, as aforementioned. Because of the constant time crunch that we were on, and such a big experiment to complete, we needed to set deadlines for ourselves, and we needed to make sure that we met all of them despite any other circumstances. We did this for most of the project, however, sometimes we need to push our deadlines, which was manageable, mainly because of the small increments we did our testing in. Additionally, we helped each other out whenever needed, allowing us to focus on other activities as well, without being stressed out about finishing our testing.
If I had a chance to do this project again, there isn't much that I would change, mainly because our experiment went nearly flawlessly. I might want to dig a bit deeper into why the brain reacts to music in the way it does, and why certain types of music help certain areas of the brain function while others don't. For now, we were only able to use previous research and information about the brain to answer these questions at a surface level. However, to get a deeper understanding about this, we would need much more costly materials as well as much more time to analyze results better.
I learned a lot about myself while doing this project. I primarily noticed that when I am more relaxed while doing a long term project, it tends to yield more results. Further, our good organization and ability to divide the experiment and testing into small increments allowed us to both take our time while testing each part and test each part correctly and effectively. I learned the value and importance of collaboration and organization.
We have exhausted all we can do for this experiment without much more funding and knowledge. However, I am interested in doing similar projects that I find interesting and that relate to science.
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