Kiss, Luca and Linnell, Karina J. 2024. The role of mood and arousal in the effect of background music on attentional state and performance during a sustained attention task. Scientific Reports, 14(1), 9485. ISSN 2045-2322 [Article]

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Abstract or Description

Across two online experiments, this study explored the effect of preferred background music on attentional state and performance, as well as on mood and arousal, during a vigilance task. It extended recent laboratory findings – showing an increase in task-focus and decrease in mind-wandering states with music – to environments with more distractions around participants. Participants – people who normally listen to background music during attention-demanding tasks – completed the vigilance task in their homes both with and without their chosen music and reported their attentional state, subjective arousal, and mood valence throughout the task. Experiment 1 compared music to relative silence and Experiment 2 compared music against the backdrop of continuous noise to continuous noise alone. In both experiments, music decreased mind-wandering and increased task-focus. Unlike in previous laboratory studies, in both experiments music also led to faster reaction times while increasing low-arousal external-distraction states. Importantly, mood and arousal increased with music and were shown to mediate its effects on reaction time and for the first time attentional state, both separately and together. Serial mediation effects were mostly confined to models where mood was entered first and arousal second and were consistent with the mood-arousal account of the impact of background music listening.

Item Type:	Article
Identification Number (DOI):	https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-60218-z
Data Access Statement:	The datasets obtained during, and/or analysed during, the current study are available on the Open Science Framework via https://osf.io/8u6bm/?view_only=6cb767fe69ea484982c5ed578423529e (https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/8U6BM).
Keywords:	background music, mind-wandering, task-focus, external-distraction, mood, arousal
Departments, Centres and Research Units:	Psychology
Dates:	Date Event 19 April 2024 Accepted 25 April 2024 Published
Item ID:	36045
Date Deposited:	19 Apr 2024 12:59
Last Modified:	15 May 2024 00:11
Peer Reviewed:	Yes, this version has been peer-reviewed.
URI:	https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/36045

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