Focus on Education

How quiet is the place where you are reading this? If there is music on or people talking, are you finding it hard to take in? If you are this would be entirely consistent with a recent piece of research that brought together the findings of sixty-five studies on auditory distraction during reading. They found that all background noise has a reliably detrimental effect on reading performance for both adults and children and that lyrical music and speech resulted in the biggest distraction. While this may not surprise us it is common to hear that learners prefer working with background music on. The message here, however, is clear: if your work involves reading (including re-reading what you have written) you will be more productive if you remove auditory distractions.