Background Music? It’s Bad!

背景音乐很糟糕

Studying for an exam while listening to music is not smart, because background music can impair your ability to perform memory tasks, new research has found.

最新研究发现，边听音乐边复习功课并非明智之举：因为背景音乐会降低你完成与记忆力相关的任务的能力。

Study participants were asked to recall a list of eight consonants in the order they were presented. They did this while in five different sound environments: quiet surroundings; music they liked; music they disliked; changing state (a sequence of random digits); and steady state (a sequence of steady digits such as “3, 3, 3, 3”).

参与调查者听到8 个辅音字母，他们必须按照播放顺序进行复述。他们听的时候，分别处在5 种不同的背景声音中：安静环境、喜欢的背景音乐、不喜欢的背景音乐、数字不断变化的响声，数字不变的响声（例如：3，3，3，3）。

The participants’ recall ability was poorest when listening to music, regardless of whether they liked or disliked it, and in changing-state conditions. The most accurate recall occurred when participants performed the task in steady-state environments, according to the study published online in the journal Applied Cognitive Psychology.

结果显示，无论他们喜欢还是不喜欢背景音乐，在播放音乐和数字不断变化的声音环境里，被调查者的记忆力都最差。该研究发现刊登在《应用认知心理学》上，研究指出人在安静环境下记忆力最.好。

“ The poorer performance of the music and changing-state sounds are due to the acoustical variation within those environments. This impairs the ability to recall the order of items, via rehearsal, within the presented list, ” explained lead researcher Nick Perham, a lecturer in the School of Psychology at the University of Wales Institute in Cardiff, in a news release from the journal’s publisher.

威尔士大学卡地夫学院的首席研究员尼克·珀罕在该期刊的新闻发布会上说：“音乐与不断变化的声音影响了人们的表现，这是因为那些环境声音变化会影响人们复述测试内容的能力。”

“Mental arithmetic also requires the ability to retain order information in the short-term via rehearsal, and may be similarly affected by their performance in the presence of changing-state, background environments,” he added.

“心算也需要通过练习在短时间内记住信息的顺序，因此也可能受到背景环境的影响，”珀罕补充道。

When performing a challenging mental task, do it in silence, Perham recommended.

珀罕建议人们应该找一个安静的环境来完成一项具有挑战性的脑力劳动。