Post 18

Introduction

It started at the Starbucks on campus.  I sat at an open table with my headphones on, listening to Bruce Springstein’s “I’m on Fire,” while I wrote a creative piece.  Then, all of a sudden, it hit me—How was the Boss’ song influencing my writing?  Well, not so much Bruce, but music in general.  I never thought about it prior to that day.  But it was a reasonable question for my research project.  

Just think about it, nowadays most of us can’t even function without listening to music.  I know I can’t.  Whether I am doing homework or writing, I’m listening to music.  When homework seems unbearable, I play upbeat music to help elevate the stress.  When I am writing, I use slow music to get me in the mood, to help me think faster, to give me ideas.  Music helps me—but, does music have the same affect on others?  More importantly, does listening to familiar music opposed to unfamiliar music help or hinder the writing process of college students?

Literature Review

In 2001, the article “The effects of background music on word processed writing” by Sarah E. Ransdell and Leonard Gilroy was published in Computers in Human Behavior.  The purpose of their study was to determine, “whether background music disrupts [college students] ability to word process fluently and effectively” (141).  

Prior to the experiment, the researchers administered a questionnaire to the 45 volunteer college students.  The questionnaire revealed that, “67% [of the participants] had been trained to sing or play a musical instrument, [and] 51% sometimes listened to music while word processing” (143). Afterwards, the participants were tested.  The procedure used for gathering data goes as follows:

All subjects participated in both the silent and music conditions.  Participants wrote two 10-min essays using a simple word processor, first in a silent control condition, and second with one of the following, instrumental music, vocal music, or both.  The silent control will henceforth be compared to simply the “music” condition since none were reliably different from one another on any dependent measure.  Participants wore headphones in both conditions and were not required to respond or make any judgments; participants were told to concentrate on writing.  They were told to write as if writing for a professor in class...The two 10-min essays were written on the following topics: the best possible college class, best possible college instructor, best possible 

boyfriend/girlfriend, and best possible vacation (145). 

It should also be noted that participants were not familiar to any of the music they were listening to, and that the essays were answered on computers.  

In order to determine if music affects word processing, Ransdell and Gilroy looked at the student’s writing fluency, average sentence length, and the percentage of long pauses, and writing quality(144).  Writing fluency, sentence length, and percentage of long pauses were measured using FauxWord---a computer program.  Writing quality was judged by student peers and was based on organization, technical quality, word choice and arrangement, content, purpose, audience, and tone (144).  

After collecting all the data, Ransdall and Gilroy found that, “the music condition significantly slowed word processed fluency with mean words generated per minute at 18.8 in the silent control condition and 17.8 in the music condition” (145).  As for effectiveness or quality, “it was not significantly reduced by the music condition” (146).  However, the study also showed that, “[w]riters who had high writing span, or who had some musical training wrote essays of higher quality...” (146).  *Writing span is the memory needed for writers to link sentences (142).  In their conclusion, Ransdall and Gilroy write, “One’s writing fluency is likely to be disrupted by both vocal and instrumental music.  And quality will be especially poor if one also has relatively poor memory skill and limited musical training” (147).

Although, this article blatantly blames bad writing on background music, it doesn’t take into account the student’s own musical choices.  If the students in Ransdall and Gilroy’s experiment were given the choice to pick their favorite musician or genre of music, how would the study differ?  

Ransdell, Sarah E., Leonard Gilroy. “The effects of background music on word processed writing.” Computers in Human Behavior 17 (2001): 141-148. Elsevier Science Ltd. Web. 2 Apr. 2013. <http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0747563200000431>