The Effects of Listening to Music with Vocals and without Vocals on Typing Performance of Younger and Older Adults

Typing has become a widespread necessity in education, work and everyday life, making it worth investigating factors that impact it. Therefore, the objective of the current study was to examine the effects of listening to music with and without vocals on typing performance, and how this effect increase or decrease with age. A total of 60 Turkish speaking participants who were either younger (n = 30) or older than 40 years of age (n = 30) were recruited for the current study. One was excluded from the analysis because of his/her outlying performance. Typing performance score (TPS) of participants was measured under three music conditions (no music, music with vocals, and music without vocals). Participants were required to type Turkish words presented on a computer screen. Results showed that participants‟, TPS decreased when they listened to music (with and without vocals), however, there were no differences in TPS between the conditions with music (i.e., with and without vocals). In addition, results showed that the effect of listening to music on TPS didn‟t interact with age. Implications such as the development of executive functioning in older adults and the importance of typing in the educational and employment setting were discussed. Keywords: Age, Executive Functioning, Listening to music, Typing process