The Irrelevant Sound Effect: Disruption in Rehearsal When Solving Syllogisms

Abstract

The main aim of study is to examine the irrelevant sound effect (ISE) and how it disrupts the rehearsal process when solving syllogisms. Twenty undergraduates completed a syllogistic reasoning task while being in two rehearsal conditions (present, not present) and three different sound conditions (quiet, liked music and disliked music) in order to investigate the effect the ISE has on task performance. Participants were also asked to report their predicted scores for the task and their opinions on properties of the sound conditions. A mixed two-way ANOVA was used to analyse the data collected. A significant interaction between sound and rehearsal on syllogistic performance was found which revealed unexpected results as participants performed best in disliked music compared to other conditions. There was also no significant difference in performance between liked and disliked conditions. Possible explanations for this occurrence and other insignificant findings are discussed. Overall, future research on the proper measures towards carrying out this study have to be considered, as well as further research on the effects of music on performance.