The Effects of Music on Different Cognitive Performances

Abstract

This article aims to review studies about the influences of music on cognitive performances and consider the potential mediators that contribute to this association. Much previous research was devoted to studying the influences of music on cognitive performances and obtained opposite results. As these studies showed contradictory findings, it is imperative to reconcile the contradiction to boost the understanding of the effects of music and decide whether to apply it to the clinical setting. Several potential factors were examined in the previous studies, like the types of tasks, music genres, and individual differences with corresponding strategies regarding music usage during cognitive performances. In this study, factors like motivation, emotion, and stress reduction are emphasized and incorporated into those factors to eliminate the discrepancy of results obtained by the previous studies about the influences of music on performance outcomes. Instead of discussing each factor separately from others, a multidimensional approach—considering multiple factors together to measure the overall benefits and impairments that the factors brought, as well as to evaluate the final effects of music—is recommended, and future studies are needed.