One of the most important categories of music is classical music. This is the type of music that needs a lot of hard work because of its inherent complexity. Classical music is not simple and definitely not for bathroom singers. It needs a lot of practice and learning to master this art. Most operas feature this music and the divas who sing the classical songs are highly respected for their range and layered performances. Classical music is taken very seriously by people who love it and if you are interested in it you may have to be coached rigorously to be stage ready.

Another type of music that has roots in very early days is the tribal music. Tribal music is inherent to particular tribes and does not need any expensive studio equipment for its creation. The tribal music of many African, Hawaiians and the American Indian tribes have qualities unique to them. Lots of African tribal music is fast paced while the Hawaiian music is very lively. American Indian music often has a haunting quality that stirs the soul. Similarly, the Nordic tribes or the Arabic ones have their own music that can be very spontaneous and emotive. If you love dancing to simple, nature based music, tribal music is best for you.

Hip-hop is a rather new kid on the block in comparison to the aforementioned veterans of music. However, it has caught the fancy of the young generation to a huge extent. Low waist pants, gesturing moves, a cool attitude and rhythmic word play – all come together to give a special quality to hip hop music. If you want to be considered hip and cool, you may want to consider a number of hip hop songs while you download music on your iPod.

Another famous music genre is Rock. Long hair, a guitar in hand and a loud voice are the main features of a rocker. The kind of frenzy a rock band evokes is hard to emulate. The pulsating music and aggressive moves make this music, one of the most popular on earth. If you are a member of a rock band, you have a ticket to instant fame.

You can also opt for the rustic and definitely much softer music genre called country music. Other musical forms are jazz which is one of the most soulful categories, blues which as the name suggests specializes in sad numbers, dance which you will love if you work as a disc jockey, folk which is another age old form of music and many others.

This option allows the listeners to hear various types of music. From the different music items that are available on Yahoo Radio you can then go on to create your very own personalized music and even a music video. Now you will not be able to claim this “new” music as an original piece of music but you will be able to listen to it at any time that you are logged on.

Besides this facility you can also hear the latest music news that is happening. This means that with Yahoo Radio you can find new music that your favorite group or singer has released. The news and gossip that people are interested in will be shown as links for you to look at. These are not the only things that you will find when you log onto Yahoo Radio.

If your media player and internet connection is capable you will be able to choose various music videos to listen and watch. These videos can be from surprising people like David Hasslehoff. Of course when you choose to watch a music video it can be pre-viewed from different countries in the world. There are also other musical items that you can look into when you use Yahoo Radio.

These items will include new musical releases by artistes that we have seldom heard about. Now if you want to hear what various people have to say about different types of music there are lots of different reviews. These reviews will inform you of the different items that you will find in music.

Now if you like the various items that you see on the Yahoo radio homepage you can apply for musical updates. These updates can be received via your email address. There is another feature which you can also use if you want to. This is a tool bar which will allow you to access the various features of the Yahoo Radio.

There are so many different items that you will find of use when you access the Yahoo radio channel. This internet radio station will provide you with many great features that you can use to get great music.

Buy mp3 music. These days for the reason of the amenities available, you are privileged to select our desired songs and listen to it. For that you need buy music, there are vast of striking music available to buy mp3 songs. At the music store in the website there are new mp3 available to buy music and download it.

The website is updated with the latest music obtainable in the market. It has the greatest collection of the mp3 downloads in its store and have a unique search engine which quickly lists the mp3 songs available to buy music. The website is known for its elegant look and user friendly. The mp3 downloads are well classified under four categories like artists, soundtracks, compilations, and genres. Buy mp3 as per your feel for music. It is very special in the quality of the music it holds in its store and even the old mp3 downloads are obtainable. So it time for you to buy mp3 music now at the store. The goal is to provide an excellent quality of the mp3 downloads at the stores and we are proven superior at legal proof. The strength of this music store is that they do an analysis on people’s interest on music and it makes it available at their stores. It also a category classification of top greatest hits according to the countries like United states, United Kingdom, and Denmark. You can also bookmark the music that you are interested and buy mp3. You’ll be able to buy mp3 and download music.

There is a grouping called updates which provides us with updated lists of the special music, and a category called new releases which hold the lists of the newly available albums for purchase. The website is very much customized understanding the customer’s requirement and designed with great zeal of music.  

This is the only website which has the latest and the top rated tracks, albums and in this store to buy mp3 at the best place. The music lists is updated very frequently whenever there is a new release. The website is very well maintained so there is no sluggish downloads happening, the mp3 downloads are downloaded at any time of the day. This is the best place for the right people having the right zeal for music. While you buy mp3 music you’ll find many of the music choices available to select from.

So why are you still waiting for, it s time to login to the website to placate your music needs which is just a few clicks of your finger tips. The selection of your beloved song is very simple at this website. And it is very easy for you search for you much loved song and buy music and download in effortless steps. It welcomes every music lover and it helps to enjoy the music and make your life more musical. Buy music away from the website at good prices and enjoy listening.  Buy mp3 only at music download.

References

Boyle, R., & Coltheart, V. (1996). Effects of irrelevant sounds on phonological coding in reading              comprehension and short-term memory. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental                              Psychology. 49A(2), 398-416. Retrieved September 09, 2008. doi:                                                   10.1080/027249896392702

Collins, M. W., & Levy, B. A. (2008). Developing fluent text processing with practice:                             Memorial influences on fluency and comprehension. The Canadian Psychologist. 49(2),                     133-139. Retrieved September 09, 2008. doi: 10.1037/0708-5591.49.2.133

Furnham, A., & Allass, K. (1999). The influence of musical distraction of varying complexity                   on the cognitive performance of extroverts and introverts. European Journal of                             Personality. 13(1), 27- 38. Retrieved September 09, 2008. doi: 10.1002/(SICI)1099-    0984(199901/02)

Furnham, A., & Bradley, A. (1997). Music while you work: The differential distraction of            background music on the cognitive test performance of introverts and extroverts.                                 Applied Cognitive Psychology. 11(5), 445-455. Retrieved September 09, 2008. doi:             10.1002/(SICI)1099-             0720(199710)

Klauda, S., & Guthrie, J. (2008). Relationships of three components of reading fluency to                         reading comprehension. Journal of Educational Psychology. 100(2), 310-321.                                  Retrieved September 09, 2008. doi: 10.1037/0022-0663.100.2.310

Oron-Gilad, T., Ronen, A., & Shinar, D. (2008). Alertness maintaining tasks (AMTs) while

driving. Accident Analysis and Prevention. 40(3), 851-860. Retrieved September 09,          2008. doi: 10.1016/j.aap.2007.09.026     

Registrar, D., Darrow, A., Standley, J., & Swedberg, O. (2007). The use of music to enhance                    reading skills in second grade students and students with reading disabilities. Journal of                Music Therapy. 44(1), 23-37. Retrieved September 09, 2008.

Savolainen, H., Ahonen, T., Aro., M., Tolvanen, A., & Holopainen, L. (2008). Reading                 comprehension, word reading and spelling as predictors of school achievement and             choice of secondary education. Learning and Instruction. 18(2), 201-210. Retrieved                 September 09, 2008. doi: 10.1016/j.learninstruc.2007.09.017

Smith, A. (2005). Aircraft and road traffic noise and children’s cognition. The Lancet,

 336(9487), 715-716. Retrieved September 09, 2008. doi: 10.1016/S0140- 6736(05)67174-7

Yao, S., Kuo-En, C., & Jung, Huang (2008). Improving children’s reading comprehension and     use of strategies through computer-based strategy training. Computers in Human      Behavior. 24(4), 1552-1571. Retrieved September 09, 2008. doi:        10.1016/j.chb.2007.05.009

Testing the Effects of Music on Reading Comprehension Skills under Different Music Environments

The influence of background music on working cognitive memory has been a debate and has become a subject that has gotten many psychological researches involved. At the same time, thanks to the advancement of technology, we now can listen to music almost wherever we may end up going. Background music while studying has become an almost every day task for students. Many students listen to music while they study. Do we want our students listening to music while they study?

School achievement clearly predicts future educational attainment (Savolainen, Ahonen, Aro, Tolvanen and Hlopainen, 2008).  As we see on a daily basis, this habit is well accepted in most institutions and there is nothing that is being done to ban it, not to mention the fact there is no research with data that would back such arguments whether it’s for this habit of against it. (Darrow, Standley and Swedberg, 2007, p. 25) state in their study that according to (Tucker, 1981) “it is widely believed that music learning, music reading and/or, music participation enhance academic achievement, especially reading and math.”

Other researchers have measured the influence of background music on cognitive performance (Furnham and Allass, 1999), however that is considered as background noise which is playing from a stereo possibly located somewhere around the subject. Our research is measuring their comprehension abilities while the subject is listening to music with their headphones on.

To understand the affects of background music on reading comprehension we must be able to measure their comprehension and then control the environment with music.

The affects of music on concentration while driving has also been looked at to see if music could possibly have an effect on fatigue in which some drives might experience. (Gilad, Ronen and Shinar, 2007).

It is important to look further into the details of this habit that is little by little taking over most college students. Why would anyone not like listening to their favorite music while studying? However, will this practice hurt the individuals at the end of their study sessions by interfering with their comprehension skills while they read?

Though a number of studies have researched similar ideas, such as memory recall while listening to music, reading comprehension measurements while listening to music and while in complete silence, they haven’t so far tested for music in which the individual might find motivating to study in.

Reading in many ways is like driving, and includes many tasks that the individual must complete to comprehend the material well. Music could in a sense make you more alert just like it does to drives who listen to music when they drive.

Over a relatively short period of time, a reader progresses from laborious word by word decoding to quickly and accurately understanding the constructing meaning contained in sentences, paragraphs, and entire passages (Collins and Levy, 2008). According to (Gilad, Ronen and Shinar, 2007), psychological fatigue, on the contrary, is a subjective experience of disinclination to continue performing the task at hand. Therefore if music takes away the individuals focus away from the fatigue, it might actually do less harm than originally thought.

Once we take this important issue in account, we can then draw a closer line to the conclusion and expand our understanding of this habit and what it can and can’t do for the students.

This research will be similar to current researches in many ways, yet will have other ways to measuring for accuracy. It is our goal to only look at the short-term effects of music on reading comprehension. There are studies out in which the researchers have measured cognition between children who were raised in areas where the traffic noise and aircraft noise was high vs. children who lived in quite areas (Stanfeld, 2005). We are also staying away from measuring memory by making the passage available for the subjects to go back to whenever they might need to.

“Measuring for phonological codes in reading comprehension has been the subject of investigation for many years” (Boyle and Coltheart, 1996). As stated by this very article the answers to component which are essential for short-term memory has still remained unanswered. 

Throughout this study, it is predicted for the individuals who listen to music to have a lower reading comprehension level than the other two controls. The second group in which the individuals get to listen to their own favorite music is predicted to do better than the last group in which we choose the music, however worst than the group who do the task in silence.

It is also predicted that the music which is playing in the subject’s ear, whether it is their choice of music or ours will interfere with their comprehension and delay their understating of materials within the context of the passage.

For example, the subjects might need to read the same sentence(s) more than once in order to comprehend the full meaning of the author.

By confirming this hypothesis, one can decide on the study skills he or she might want to get used to. Once we reach our conclusion in this study, it will implicate the very fact that music is good but only to a certain degree such as driving. However it is an unnecessary tool for students to use while they study. If the comprehension levels are lower when the individual is listening to music, it will set the ground for major studies to follow and possibly making this an epidemic. This study is a very small step in summarizing and concluding this issue, and there hasn’t been a significant amount of evidence based on the research done. However, we wish to confirm our hypothesis as far as the effects of music on reading comprehension.

Although the majority of research show a strong correlation between music and cognitive tasks, and even succeeding and doing better in special education students, they fail to control for music the is the choice of the subject.

This study was designed to investigate the correlation between individuals who listen to music while reading a passage and compare their comprehension levels to the subjects who read their passages in silence and compare those levels with subjects who read passages while listening to the music they have chosen as their favorite music which in many cases is a type of music that will motivate them. 

Method

Participants

We will be using 60 participants for our study. We will use 20 participants for each of the three conditions. The participants will be assigned to the randomly assigned conditions in sets of 5.  We will have a total of 12 sets of participants, 4 sets per condition. We will randomly assign the conditions by writing each condition on pieces of paper, placing them in a bag, and drawing them out one by one.  Our selection procedure is based on the qualification of being able to read English fluently and participants must be a Psychology 150 and/or 250 students whom will be notified by the school’s research management website also known as “Sona System” once our research methods are approved by the board. The participants will get credit for their participation. The credit authorization will be filled out by us, the researcher, and we will also list their credits on the Sona System.

Materials

The participants will be given a 5 page booklet, a pencil and a stop watch for their timing purposes. We will also be using a desktop PC if available in the research rooms or we will provide a laptop for the purposes of playing a CD and accessing the World Wide Web to find the participant’s music of choice. The participants in the conditions with music will be advised to bring their own headphones, and if for any reason they forget to bring their own, they will be given a headphone which they can keep at the end of the research session.

Procedures

Our research is measuring the level of reading comprehension of the participants based on three different conditions.  Condition one involves no music, condition two involves listening

to music that has been chosen by the researcher and condition three involves the participants listening to the music of their choice. All conditions will require the participant to read the passage that is being provided to them. The participants will be given an introduction to what they will be doing.

This introduction will take just under one minute. They will be told about the booklet and the 10 questions which they will have to answer following reading the passage. We will tell the participants that they can go back to the passage whenever they feel necessary, since this is NOT a memory research. They will be informed that they can use any way they are most comfortable with, whether it be search and destroy method, in which the participant can read the questions first one by one then going through the passage to look for answers or they can read the passage then start to answer the questions and go back if they needed to.

In all three conditions, the participants will be given a total of 8 minutes to complete reading the passage and answering the questions. They will also be informed that they may NOT guess on any questions. If they can’t find it, they will have to move on or if they don’t have enough time to finish, they will have to leave the questions blank.

The researcher will ask the participant to place his/her pencil on the table and STOP after the 8 minutes has lapsed.  For the participants in which the condition requires listening to music we will provide ear phones which are either connected to a PC in the research rooms or a laptop

which will be able to play a CD.  For all participants we have decided to use Classical Jazz by Sade and the song is called “The Sweetest Taboo”.

The participants will be given 1 minute to come up with the 5 songs of their choice in the condition in which the participant uses the music of their choice. We will then take an extra

minute to find one of their songs on the World Wide Web. They will then also be given the headphones along with their favorite music playing ON REPLAY for the duration of the 8 minutes.

The total duration for the experiment will take no more than 15 minutes. Once the participants are done with the passage, they will get debriefed and credit will be given to them for their class participation purposes.

Results

Within all the groups, the total number of participants was 56. There were 46 females and 10 males.  There were 82% females and 18% males.  The mean of their ages was 20. The median of their ages was 19 and the mode of their ages stood at 18. The standard deviation of the ages was calculated to be 4.692. The minimum age was of the participants was 18 and the maximum age was 50. The variance age of the groups was 22.015. 

For Condition #1 in which we had No Music, we had 20 participants, which equaled to 35.7% of the total participants.  For Condition #2 in which the participants listened to Jazz Music, we had 18 participants, which equaled to 32.15% of the total participants.  For Condition #3 in which the participants chose their Own Music, we had 18 participants, which equaled to 32.15% of the total participants. 

Over 75% of the scores were above the 50%tile rank and 27% of the scores were perfect. Also, 5% got zero questions right. The mean score was 6.59. The median score was 6 and the mode score was 10. The standard deviation of the scores was calculated to be 2.84.

The minimum score was 0 and the maximum score was 10. The scores ranged from 0 to 10. The variance of the scores was 8.065.

Between all of our participants 53.36% were freshman totaling 31 students, and 23.21% were sophomores, totaling 13 students.  Also, 19.64% were juniors, totaling 11 student and 1.79% seniors totaling 1 student. From the whole participant pool, 46.43% of our subjects normally listened to music while studying which equals to 26 students.

A one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was calculated on participants’ ratings of reading comprehension scores. The independent variable was the music conditions in which the participants read the article under. The dependent variable was the measurement of reading comprehension based on their scores. The higher the score the higher the participant’s reading comprehension level. The analysis was significant, F(2, 55) = 35.98, p < 0.05. A post-hoc analysis showed that the participants in the No Music condition outperformed both the participants in the Jazz Music condition and Their Own Music condition; also there was a significant difference between the participants in Their Own Music condition and the Jazz Music Condition where the participants in Their Own Music condition outperformed the participants in Our Music Condition.