I've noticed that music seems to help me focus while programming but makes long-form writing harder.
As usual, has already assembled a nice bibliography: gwern.net/Music-distract
Only one paper on writing (10m essays); finds a modest (-) effect: gwern.net/docs/music-dis
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I also found this experiment on the impact of background speech on writing, which had longer writing tasks and more pronounced results: researchgate.net/profile/Guoli_
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There are many studies on the impact of music on reading comprehension, which average out to a modest negative effect, but with some variation depending on type of music. Review: gwern.net/docs/music-dis
Can’t find much on music and programming, but this study found modest positive impact (attributed to affect) of music on “computer information systems” work: gwern.net/docs/music-dis
Not an ideal method: asking people to stop listening to music for a week, looking at impact.
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Did some n=3 explorations with & upon initial observations that I can sing along to music while reading, G would completely tune it out, and S wasn't sure.
Comprehension seemed lower (of the novel) ...nothing conclusive but neat to experiment with!
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Suggests to me, at any rate, that averages may mislead here. Different people may use different mental structures to perform the same task.
eg someone who counts visually can maybe count while talking, someone who counts using verbal loop would have more trouble
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