The Effects of Easy-Listening Background Music on the On-Task-Performance of Fifth-Grade Children

To determine the effect of background music on on-task-performance (OTP), 26 pupils in a fifth-grade science class were observed for 42 class sessions over a period of four months. Observational data were recorded every three minutes. Time-series analyses were performed on the data to determine the effect of the intervention on OTP. Autocorrelations were computed for the pretreatment, treatment, and posttreatment periods and examined for significance. Independence of observations was determined, indicating analysis of variance as the appropriate statistical treatment.A significant increase (p = .0001) in OTP was determined for the male subjects and for the total class (p = .0001). Although there was an increase in OTP for females, the effect of the intervention was inhibited by the ceiling effect (the mean pretreatment OTP for females was 99%).