The ability to efficiently process conflicting information is a central feature of executive control and is thought to recruit a wide network of prefrontal regions. Changing the context in which it occurs provides a relatively easy way to modulate performance. Background auditory stimuli, ranging from various genres of music to different power spectra of noise signals (sonic tones), are some of the most commonly explored contextual factors, yet their effects remain inconclusive.
Researchers from the Monash Medicine Discovery Institute and Monash University (Australia) have conducted a study specifically exploring the possibility that classical music and white noise can positively influence people’s ability to process conflictive information. Their conclusions suggest that these two auditory stimuli have no benefit.
To better understand how the processing of certain acoustic properties can influence conflict processing, they had a large cohort of college students complete the Stroop Color and Word Test (SCWT) under three different background conditions: classical music, white noise, and noise. Silence.
The SCWT is a widely used neuropsychological test that assesses a person’s ability to process specific stimuli while presented with conflicting stimulus attributes. This usually consists of naming the color of fonts, even though fonts are used to spell inconsistent color words (for example, green, red, blue).
They found that white noise, but not classical music, increased the response time difference between congruent (low-conflict) and incongruent (high-conflict) trials, impairing performance. Both auditory stimuli were reproduced at a similar intensity, so their dissociable effects may have resulted from the participants’ different emotional responses, with white noise but not music eliciting a negative response.
Essentially, the findings suggest that neither classical music nor white noise led to an improvement in the participant’s ability to process conflicting stimuli. White noise, however, seemed to negatively affect performance by making it difficult to process conflicting motivations.
