Comparing silence with verbal & non-verbal music and irrelevant speech in mathematics assessment

This study looks at the effects of silence as compared to two different types of music and one type of irrelevant speech to analyze the effects on an assessment of 4 categories of mathematical questions. The hypothesis tested was that students would perform best when subject to no distraction (silence), followed closely by non-verbal music (dubstep), while verbal music (Rap) and irrelevant self-speech (repeating the word ‘za’) would result in a decrease in performance. The hypothesis was not found to be statistically significant, but a general trend supporting the hypothesis was present and found to be consistent with similar research.