The influence of background music on working cognitive memory has been a debate and has become a subject that has gotten many psychological researches involved. At the same time, thanks to the advancement of technology, we now can listen to music almost wherever we may end up going. Background music while studying has become an almost every day task for students. Many students listen to music while they study.

Do we want our students listening to music while they study?

Other researchers have measured the influence of background music on cognitive performance (Furnham and Allass, 1999), however that is considered as background noise which is playing from a stereo possibly located somewhere around the subject. Our research is measuring their comprehension abilities while the subject is listening to music with their headphones on.

This study was designed to investigate the correlation between individuals who listen to music while reading a passage and compare their comprehension levels to the subjects who read their passages in silence and compare those levels with subjects who read passages while listening to the music they have chosen as their favorite music which in many cases is a type of music that will motivate them.

A one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was calculated on participants' ratings of reading comprehension scores. The independent variable was the music conditions in which the participants read the article under. The dependent variable was the measurement of reading comprehension based on their scores. The higher the score the higher the participant's reading comprehension level. The analysis was significant, F(2, 55) = 35.98, p

A post-hoc analysis showed that the participants in the No Music condition outperformed both the participants in the Jazz Music condition and Their Own Music condition; also there was a significant difference between the participants in Their Own Music condition and the Jazz Music Condition where the participants in Their Own Music condition outperformed the participants in Our Music Condition.