Abstract
Listening to music for relaxation is common among students to counter the effects of stress or anxiety while completing difficult academic tasks. Some studies supporting this technique have shown that background music promotes cognitive performance while other studies have shown that listening to music while engaged in complex cognitive tasks can impair performance. This study focuses on the effect of music on the mental health among students of Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU) Ile-Ife, the study will also assess the effect of playing music at different volume levels and it effect on the cognitive abilities of college students completing academic tasks.
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
- Background of the study
Music listening is one of the most enigmatic of human behaviors. Most common behaviors have a recognizable utility that can be plausibly traced to the practical motives of survival and procreation. Moreover, in the array of seemingly odd behaviors, few behaviors match music for commandeering so much time, energy, and money. Music listening is one of the most popular leisure activities. Music is a ubiquitous companion to people's everyday lives. The enthusiasm for music is not a recent development. Recognizably musical activities appear to have been present in every known culture on earth, with ancient roots extending back 250,000 years or more (see Zatorre and Peretz, 2001). The ubiquity and antiquity of music has inspired considerable speculation regarding its origin and function.
Throughout history, scholars of various stripes have pondered the nature of music. Philosophers, psychologists, anthropologists, musicologists, and neuroscientists have proposed a number of theories concerning the origin and purpose of music and some have pursued scientific approaches to investigating them (e.g., Fitch, 2006; Peretz, 2006; Levitin, 2007; Schäfer and Sedlmeier, 2010). The origin of music is shrouded in prehistory. There is little physical evidence—like stone carvings or fossilized footprints—that might provide clues to music's past. Necessarily, hypotheses concerning the original functions of music will remain speculative. Nevertheless, there are a number of plausible and interesting conjectures that offer useful starting-points for investigating the functions of music. A promising approach to the question of music's origins focuses on how music is used—that is, it's various functions. In fact, many scholars have endeavored to enumerate various musical functions (see below). The assumption is that the function(s) that music is presumed to have served in the past would be echoed in at least one of the functions that music serves today. Of course, how music is used today need have no relationship with music's function(s) in the remote past. Nevertheless, evidence from modern listeners might provide useful clues pertinent to theorizing about origins. Many students listen to music to alleviate the emotional effects of stress and anxiety when engaged in complex cognitive processing, such as studying for a test, completing homework assignments, or while reading and writing. This practice is so common that it would be beneficial for college students to understand the role that music plays on cognitive performance. Research demonstrating the effects of music on performance is well documented, but have shown ambiguous evidence on this matter. In studies conducted to learn about the effects of musical distraction on cognitive task performance, the findings have demonstrated the idea of music improving cognitive performance (Cockerton, Moore, & Norman, 1997), but there has also been research contradicting those results, where music was found distracting for participants performing cognitive tasks (Furnham & Bradley, 1997). However, with the plethora of music genres available to music listeners, it is important to understand how different types of music impact performance. Additionally, very few studies address the interaction between the intensity or volume of the music played and its effect on cognitive processing. The present study aims to understand the effect of listening to different genres of music played at different volume levels on cognitive task performance. Many students choose to listen to a preferred genre of music when they study or do their homework without understanding the potential harmful effects of such practice. A study conducted by Smith and Morris (1977) addressed this question by studying the effects of sedative and stimulative music. The study focused on the influence these two distinct genres of music have on performance, anxiety, and concentration. Participants had to indicate their preferred genre and were requested to repeat a set of numbers backwards while listening to either the stimulative, sedative, or no music. The results indicated that participants performed worse while listening to their preferred type of music. Additionally, in the no music condition, participants performed best. These results indicate that a preferred type of music can serve as a distracting factor when one is engaged in a cognitively demanding task perhaps due to the fact that less cognitive resources are available when the attention is drawn to the lyrics, emotions, and memories that such music can evoke. Participants who listened to sedative music performed better than participants who listened to simulative music and worse than those who listened to no music at all. These results indicated that stimulative music is a stronger distractor and obstructs cognitive processing more than sedative music does Mental health is not well understood by the public and presenting news and information through the popular medium of radio could assist in raising awareness of mental health issues in a big way. It could also allow people with mental health problems to learn more about mental health outside their own experience. They will realize that they are not alone in having mental health problems. The best way to raise awareness of mental health issues through radio broadcasts is for the program to be presented by people who themselves have mental health problems. This will not only give members of the public a better understanding of the issues, but will in time give the mental health consumers empowerment, confidence and self-esteem, and allow them to lead productive lives again, The influence of music on cognitive performance has also been linked to personality types. A study conducted by Furnham and Bradley (1997) illustrated pop music as a distracter on the cognitive performance of introverts and extraverts. They predicted that extraverts would outperform introverts in the presence of music. The participants were required to perform two cognitive tasks: a memory test with both an immediate and a delayed recall and a reading comprehension test. The two tasks would be completed in the pop music condition as well as in silence. The results determined that immediate recall on the memory test was severely impaired for both introverts and extraverts when the pop music was played. In the delayed recall component of the memory test, introverts showed significantly poorer recall than did extraverts in the pop music condition as well as introverts in the silent condition. Also the introverts’ performance on the reading comprehension task in the pop music condition was impaired when compared to extraverts in the same condition and to introverts who performed the task in silence. Overall, the researchers determined that pop music served as a distractor for the cognitive performance of both extraverts and introverts; however, introverts seemed to be most affected. Interestingly, this study revealed some evidence that overall background noise, such as television, music, and chatter could improve performance in complex cognitive tasks for extraverts, although it will significantly impair introverts’ performance (Furnham & Bradley, 1997).
- STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
Music preferences have been associated with a number of variables including personal attributes (Rentfrow & Gosling, 2003), personality characteristics (Rentfrow & Gosling 2003; Schwartz & Fouts 2003; Zweigenhaft, 2008), interpersonal perceptions (Rentfrow & Gosling, 2006), self-views, and cognitive ability (Rentfrow & Gosling 2003), as well as suicidality (Burge et al., 2002). No research to date has explored the effect of music on mental health among students, which is the purpose of the present study. It is important to understand the role of music preferences and the functions of music listening for college students and how these preferences and functions may affect their mental faculty and their academic performance. It is in view of this that the researcher intends to investigate the effect of music on mental health amongst students of OAU Ife, Nigeria.
- OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY
The main objective of the study is to ascertain the effect of music on the mental health amongst students of Obafemi Awolowo university Ile Ife Nigeria, but to aid the successful completion of the study, the researcher intend to achie
Intend to achieve the following specific objective:
- To ascertain the effect of music on the mental health of university students
- To investigate if playing music in the background while reading aid assimilation process of the students
- To ascertain if there is any relationship between music playing habit of the students and their mental health
- To evaluate the impact of music on the psychological well-being of the student
1.4 RESEARCH QUESTION
To aid the successful completion of the study, the following research questions were formulated by the researcher
- Is there any effect of music on the mental health of students of Obafemi Awolowo university?
- Does playing music while reading enhanced better assimilation by the students?
- Is there any relationship between music playing habit of the student and their mental health?
- Is there any impact of music on the psychological well-being of the students?
- SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY
It is believed that at the completion of the study, the findings will be of great importance to the students of varsities as the study seek to explore the effect of music on the mental health of the students, the study will also be of importance to department of music and counseling as the study seek to explore the dangers of playing music while reading on the assimilation process of the students, the study will also be of importance to researchers who intends to embark on a study in a similar topic, finally the study will be of great importance to the student, teachers, lecturers and the general public as the study will add to the pool of existing literature
- SCOPE AND LIMITATION OF THE STUDY
The scope of the study covers the effect of music on the mental health among students of Obafemi Awolowo university Ile Ife Nigeria, in the cause of the study, there were some factors which limited the scope of the study
- a) AVAILABILITY OF RESEARCH MATERIAL: The research material available to the researcher is insufficient, thereby limiting the study
- b) TIME: The time frame allocated to the study does not enhance wider coverage as the researcher has to combine other academic activities and examinations with the study.
- c) FINANCE: The finance available for the research work does not allow for wider coverage as resources are very limited as the researcher has other academic bills to cover.
1.7 DEFINITION OF TERMS
Music
Music is an art form and cultural activity whose medium is sound organized in time.
Mental health
Mental health is a level of psychological well-being, or an absence of mental illness. It is the “psychological state of someone who is functioning at a satisfactory level of emotional and behavioral adjustment”
Reading habit
Reading (process), the cognitive process of decoding symbols to derive meaning (“reading a book” or “reading music”)
- ORGANIZATION OF THE STUDY
This research work is organized in five chapters, for easy understanding, as follows Chapter one is concern with the introduction, which consist of the (overview, of the study), statement of problem, objectives of the study, research question, significance or the study, research methodology, definition of terms and historical background of the study. Chapter two highlight the theoretical framework on which the study its based, thus the review of related literature. Chapter three deals on the research design and methodology adopted in the study. Chapter four concentrate on the data collection and analysis and presentation of finding. Chapter five gives summary, conclusion, and recommendations made of the study.
