Studying with Music “As a professor, I am interested in how my students study in
ID: 3526458 • Letter: S
Question
Studying with Music
“As a professor, I am interested in how my students study in general, and how they study for upcoming exams. One of the things that they often tell me is that listening to music helps them understand study material better than they would if they had to study in silence,” said Dr. Robinson, who teaches at a large university. He continued on to say that, “I want to find out if this is really true.”
In order to test whether or not his students were correct, that they were better able to understand material while listening to music, Dr. Robinson divided his advanced music theory class of music majors into two groups of 25 students each. On the day of testing, he instructed the students who sat in the front of the classroom to read a long biology text while music played in their headphones, and the students who sat in the back of the classroom were instructed to read the same text in silence.
After 15 minutes had lapsed, Dr. Robinson had the students write down what line they were on in the text as a way of measuring reading comprehension. Dr. Robinson argued that reading is slowed when material is hard to comprehend. Unfortunately, the professor found that 20% of the students in the music group failed to record their final line.
For the students who did follow directions, Dr. Robinson found that the students who listened to music read more lines than those who read in silence. Additionally, he found that the students who listened to music comprehended more of the passage than the students who did not listen to the music.
Because he was surprised at the results he found, Dr. Robinson ran the study again later in the term. He found the same results.
When he was interviewed about his findings, he said that, “To my surprise, my students were right—they did understand more when they listened to music than when they studied in silence. I have actually started to suggest to my students that based on my results, they may want to start listening to music when they prepare for exams.”
Which of the following are true (there may be more than 1):
- Poor or missing comparison group
- No Random assignment
- DV could be more sensitive, accurate, or precise
- DV is not scored objectively
- DV is not valid
- subject/participant bias
- mortality or attrition
- small sample size
- poor sample selection
- experimenter bias
- premature generalization of results
- confuse correlation with causation
Explanation / Answer
The problems with the current study are poor or missing comparison group, no random assignment, DV could be more sensitive, accurate or precise, and poor sample selection.