Effects of Multitasking with Music on English-Based Academic Task Accuracy and Completion Speed in High School Students at Eastwood High School: An Experimental Research Study

This research study looked at how multitasking with music affects academic performance of high school students when measuring the speed and accuracy on English-based tasks. Associations between worse academic performance and multitasking exist; however, many current studies are on adults and college students and do not look into real-time performance or self-selected music. To fill this gap, an experimental quantitative research study was done in which 20 students, ages 14-18, completed English-based tasks under two conditions, music and no music. The participants’ performance was measured by accuracy and completion time, and then analyzed with a paired sample t-test to compare the results. The data showed that students had slightly increased accuracy and speed in the music condition. The difference between the results was not large enough to be statistically significant. The findings suggest that multitasking with music may not have a major effect on academic performance of time completion or accuracy. This study can add to the field of multitasking through the finding that the effects of multitasking are dependent on habits from the individual participants and environments, instead of purely having a negative effect.