Background music

Background music refers to various styles of music or soundscapes primarily intended to be passively listened to. It is not meant to be the main focus of an audience, but rather to supplement that which is meant to be focused upon. Music that is played at a low volume and is not the main focus of an audience is also referred to as background music. Traditional examples of background music include music played at various social gatherings and music played in certain retail venues. It is also common to employ background music in various electronic media including film, television, video games, and Internet videos such as video blogs.

The study of background music focuses on the impact of music with non-musical tasks, including changes in behavior in the presence of different types, settings, or styles of music. In laboratory settings, music can affect performance on cognitive tasks (memory, attention, and comprehension), both positively and negatively. Used extensively as an advertising aid, music may also affect marketing strategies, ad comprehension, and consumer choices.

Background music can influence learning,working memory and recall, performance while working on tests, and attention in cognitive monitoring tasks.

Participants who memorized foreign language words while listening to Baroque music recalled an average of 8.7% more words than those who did not listen to music. The effect of music was stronger for less common words, and there was no effect of music on recall a week later.

The Mozart effect occurs when performance on cognitive tasks requiring spatial manipulations (such as a mental rotation task) improves after listening to fifteen minutes of Mozart. In a typical mental rotation task, participants see two 3D shapes drawn on paper, and then decide if they are different views of the same shape or different shapes. This comparison often requires mental rotation of the object. The Mozart effect is inconsistent when tested with musicians and non-musicians. Only non-musicians showed any improvement when given the mental rotation task before and after listening to Mozart. Musicians tend to process music using both brain hemispheres, whereas non-musicians use mostly their right hemisphere. Listening to Mozart increased arousal in the right hemisphere (active during mental rotation), and non-musicians may have performed better due to more right hemisphere activity.

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