Most people do not consider to be negatively affected by background music while reading or learning. Several studies have shown that irrelevant background sound with certain temporal and spectral structure affects cognitive performance. This effect is called Irrelevant Sound Effect (ISE). In this study the influence of music with German vocals and music with English vocals on the processing of the reading span task is compared. Subjects had to work on an English and a German version of the reading span task The reading span task contained a serial recall subtask and a sentence verification subtask. Both turned out to be negatively affected by background music. The degree of disturbance in the English version of the reading span task depended on the language of the background music. The performance on the serial recall task was more negatively affected by music with English vocals, while the sentence verification task was more negatively affected by music with German vocals. It is concluded that different cognitive processes are involved and that music with vocals influences the processing of a native-language task and the processing of a foreign-language task in different ways.
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