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EEG Beta Power but Not Background Music Predicts the Recall Scores in a Foreign-Vocabulary Learning Task

As tantalizing as the idea that background music beneficially affects foreign vocabulary learning may seem, there is—partly due to a lack of theory-driven research—no consistent evidence to support this notion. We investigated inter-individual differences in the effects of background music on foreig...

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Autores principales: Küssner, Mats B., de Groot, Annette M. B., Hofman, Winni F., Hillen, Marij A.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2016
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4990275/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27537520
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0161387
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author Küssner, Mats B.
de Groot, Annette M. B.
Hofman, Winni F.
Hillen, Marij A.
author_facet Küssner, Mats B.
de Groot, Annette M. B.
Hofman, Winni F.
Hillen, Marij A.
author_sort Küssner, Mats B.
collection PubMed
description As tantalizing as the idea that background music beneficially affects foreign vocabulary learning may seem, there is—partly due to a lack of theory-driven research—no consistent evidence to support this notion. We investigated inter-individual differences in the effects of background music on foreign vocabulary learning. Based on Eysenck’s theory of personality we predicted that individuals with a high level of cortical arousal should perform worse when learning with background music compared to silence, whereas individuals with a low level of cortical arousal should be unaffected by background music or benefit from it. Participants were tested in a paired-associate learning paradigm consisting of three immediate word recall tasks, as well as a delayed recall task one week later. Baseline cortical arousal assessed with spontaneous EEG measurement in silence prior to the learning rounds was used for the analyses. Results revealed no interaction between cortical arousal and the learning condition (background music vs. silence). Instead, we found an unexpected main effect of cortical arousal in the beta band on recall, indicating that individuals with high beta power learned more vocabulary than those with low beta power. To substantiate this finding we conducted an exact replication of the experiment. Whereas the main effect of cortical arousal was only present in a subsample of participants, a beneficial main effect of background music appeared. A combined analysis of both experiments suggests that beta power predicts the performance in the word recall task, but that there is no effect of background music on foreign vocabulary learning. In light of these findings, we discuss whether searching for effects of background music on foreign vocabulary learning, independent of factors such as inter-individual differences and task complexity, might be a red herring. Importantly, our findings emphasize the need for sufficiently powered research designs and exact replications of theory-driven experiments when investigating effects of background music and inter-individual variation on task performance.
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spelling pubmed-49902752016-08-29 EEG Beta Power but Not Background Music Predicts the Recall Scores in a Foreign-Vocabulary Learning Task Küssner, Mats B. de Groot, Annette M. B. Hofman, Winni F. Hillen, Marij A. PLoS One Research Article As tantalizing as the idea that background music beneficially affects foreign vocabulary learning may seem, there is—partly due to a lack of theory-driven research—no consistent evidence to support this notion. We investigated inter-individual differences in the effects of background music on foreign vocabulary learning. Based on Eysenck’s theory of personality we predicted that individuals with a high level of cortical arousal should perform worse when learning with background music compared to silence, whereas individuals with a low level of cortical arousal should be unaffected by background music or benefit from it. Participants were tested in a paired-associate learning paradigm consisting of three immediate word recall tasks, as well as a delayed recall task one week later. Baseline cortical arousal assessed with spontaneous EEG measurement in silence prior to the learning rounds was used for the analyses. Results revealed no interaction between cortical arousal and the learning condition (background music vs. silence). Instead, we found an unexpected main effect of cortical arousal in the beta band on recall, indicating that individuals with high beta power learned more vocabulary than those with low beta power. To substantiate this finding we conducted an exact replication of the experiment. Whereas the main effect of cortical arousal was only present in a subsample of participants, a beneficial main effect of background music appeared. A combined analysis of both experiments suggests that beta power predicts the performance in the word recall task, but that there is no effect of background music on foreign vocabulary learning. In light of these findings, we discuss whether searching for effects of background music on foreign vocabulary learning, independent of factors such as inter-individual differences and task complexity, might be a red herring. Importantly, our findings emphasize the need for sufficiently powered research designs and exact replications of theory-driven experiments when investigating effects of background music and inter-individual variation on task performance. Public Library of Science 2016-08-18 /pmc/articles/PMC4990275/ /pubmed/27537520 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0161387 Text en © 2016 Küssner et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Küssner, Mats B.
de Groot, Annette M. B.
Hofman, Winni F.
Hillen, Marij A.
EEG Beta Power but Not Background Music Predicts the Recall Scores in a Foreign-Vocabulary Learning Task
title EEG Beta Power but Not Background Music Predicts the Recall Scores in a Foreign-Vocabulary Learning Task
title_full EEG Beta Power but Not Background Music Predicts the Recall Scores in a Foreign-Vocabulary Learning Task
title_fullStr EEG Beta Power but Not Background Music Predicts the Recall Scores in a Foreign-Vocabulary Learning Task
title_full_unstemmed EEG Beta Power but Not Background Music Predicts the Recall Scores in a Foreign-Vocabulary Learning Task
title_short EEG Beta Power but Not Background Music Predicts the Recall Scores in a Foreign-Vocabulary Learning Task
title_sort eeg beta power but not background music predicts the recall scores in a foreign-vocabulary learning task
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4990275/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27537520
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0161387
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