| Abstract | Many students listen to music when studying (Muslimah & Apriani, 2020). The present study aims to investigate whether there is a connection between listening to music while taking academic tests and the students’ performance on these tests. Three music conditions (music with lyrics, music without lyrics and no music) and student performance on two types of tests (comprehension and mathematical) will be manipulated in a repeated measures design. Thirty healthy students will complete both the comprehension and the mathematical tests in the three music environments and their scores will be recorded. We predict that the participants will perform the worst in the comprehension test that is taken in the music with lyrics environment. This is because the processing of the lyrics and the processing of the text-heavy test both take place in the same area of the brain which can serve as a distraction and result in the participants not performing as well. We predict the mathematical test in the music with lyrics environment to have the second lowest scores because math questions often also involve word comprehension which will be done in the same part of the brain as the lyrics processing. We predict that the other two music environments will not have a significant effect on the performance on either of the tests because different parts of the brain are used for processing non-lyrical sounds.
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