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Music and driving game performance
Author(s) -
North Adrian C.,
Hargreaves David J.
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
scandinavian journal of psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.743
H-Index - 72
eISSN - 1467-9450
pISSN - 0036-5564
DOI - 10.1111/1467-9450.404128
Subject(s) - psychology , task (project management) , active listening , context (archaeology) , cognitive psychology , preference , musical , conjunction (astronomy) , social psychology , communication , visual arts , art , paleontology , management , economics , biology , microeconomics , physics , astronomy
This study investigated the effects of the nature of music and a concurrent task on measures of task performance and musical preference. Subjects completed 5 laps of a computer motor racing game whilst listening to either arousing or relatively unarousing music in either the presence or absence of a backward‐counting task. Both these manipulations affected performance on the game with arousing music and backward‐counting leading to slower lap times than relatively unarousing music and the absence of the backward‐counting task. Backward‐counting led to lower liking for the music than did the absence of this task. These results support the idea that music and the concurrent task competed for a limited processing resource. The results also indicated that liking for the music was positively related to task performance, and in conjunction these findings seem to suggest a direct link between music and the listening context.