Abstract
The purpose of this project was to discover how the presence of music affected the reaction time of people. This has relevance to drivers and athletes. Since more and more people operate vehicles it is important to understand how their conditions affect their performance and likeliness to crash. The effect of presence of music on reaction time was determined by having two different groups perform the same RT experiment; one listened to music of their choice, the other did not listen to music. It was thought that music would aid in participants’ reaction time (i.e. decreasing reaction time). The results collected during this investigation were 752ms and 701ms for music and no music groups, respectively. However, listeners adapted to the music and were able to perform almost as well as those in the control group. This means that music actually hindered participants’ reaction time rather than helping it. The results showed that the hypothesis was refuted. This happened because music created a distraction and diverted attention from the brain to the music. Possible errors were a lack of participants, lack of trials, and
difference of enjoyment. Future research could be the effect of enjoyment of music on RT.