5 ms·

I can only speak from the angle of memory/attention research, but a couple lines of study struck me. 1. Irrelevant speech / sounds tends to reduce memory capac

by closed 10y ago

I can only speak from the angle of memory/attention research, but a couple lines of study struck me. 1. Irrelevant speech / sounds tends to reduce memory capacity for the task at hand[a]. 2. People with ADHD self-stimulate by, e.g, squirming. Music can help them with attentional tasks by providing stimulation [b]. Overall, I'm not that familiar with studies specifically on music, but I'd guess that it's a trade-off between arousal (e.g. rock music or something to pump you up) and dividing attention. Music could also set a context (e.g. put you in programming "mode"), which tends to have a small positive effect on performance on a number of cognitive tasks. [a] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irrelevant_speech_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irrelevant_speech_effect [b] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_arousal_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_arousal_theory

Klathmon 10y ago
I have ADHD, and it's really difficult to describe to people how the "self stimulation" works. It's almost like I need to keep part of my brain busy so the other "quieter" part can work. Music, driving, pacing around, and to a lesser extent fidgeting or tapping can all "placate" that part of my brain so the other can actually do work. I'll even do things like play music while listening to a talk or presentation while working, because without the music keeping me "busy" I just can't focus on the topic of the talk.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- sosuke 10y ago
  Great phrasing of the feeling. I started listening to e-books, fiction, after finding that my programming thoughts don't really intersect my verbal thoughts. The benefit being I don't get distracted reading anything else because my speech center is already occupied. The only time I have to pause the music is during a planning session where I do have internal dialogue. ATTN paki123: I can't reply to your comment but you should visit and read http://addforums.com/ http://addforums.com/ for support, drug reviews/experiences and tips
  - paki123 10y ago
    Holy shit, I do this too. Is there a resource(besides adderall) that can help me deal with this and understand this better?
    - Klathmon 10y ago
      I "vouched" for your comment as it was showing up dead for some reason... I can second sosuke, addforums.com was a great resource. I haven't been there for a long time though.
      - ThrustVectoring 10y ago
        It probably showed up dead because of automated anti-spam tools that pick up on spammy keywords. Naming a scheduled medication by name is probably more than enough to trigger something like that.
        Klathmon 10y ago
        I don't think that's quite it. All of the comments in their user profile are marked dead back a few hundred days. I read them over, nothing looked overtly spammy or troll-ey, so I vouched for this comment as it seemed genuine. I do think it's an anti-spam or anti-troll measure, but it looks like it's a mishit in this case. That being said, is there anyone where we read up on what vouching/dead/etc... means on HN? Maybe one of the mods or someone can help explain some of it (or let me know that they won't explain it for anti-spam purposes...).
        nitrogen 10y ago
        You probably saw this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10298512 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10298512 That doesn't explain exactly how vouching works, and I think the "strength" of a vouch might be changed per-user (it no longer seems to do the same thing it used to, for me, at least).
- closed 10y ago
  Those things really resonate with me. In some ways it feels like a person riding an slightly unruly elephant, and the music is to appease it.
- yesiamyourdad 10y ago
  I think that explains my taste in "focus" music. Most of the "focus" playlists are ambient or classical. The ambient stuff is just there; it doesn't really engage my brain. It's like traffic noise. Classical is... I don't know, too structural? I find it distracting. My brain switches on when I'm listening to stuff that's challenging - dissonant, rhythmically odd, fast paced, changing tempos. But I've thought the same thing, that kind of music engages some part of my brain so the part that's more linear-thinking can get on with business uninterrupted. So my "focus" playlist is post-bop Jazz with things like Chick Corea (especially Three Quartets), Steps Ahead, Keith Jarrett's Standards Trio stuff, early Wynton Marsalis. Some Coltrane, but not so much his meditative stuff - things like Giant Steps make my brain engage. I can't multitask like that though - I can't have two auditory sources. When I'm talking to people, I have trouble picking out voices when surrounded by a crowd, or with several people talking at once. It's like I'm trying to make sense of all the background noise and can't pick up what's being said directly to me.
  - Klathmon 10y ago
    It's very similar for me. My music is EDM like many other coders, but it's more live performances, as they just don't end. Generally i'll grab a playlist of like 3 or 4 live shows from the same producer and i'll play them back to back. But the multitasking thing is a bit different for me, it's more one-sense-at-a-time for me. My wife has laughed at me before because she'll come home and i'll be watching a youtube talk on one screen, playing music over the speakers, and programming something mundane all at the same time, but if 2 people are talking at the same time I have trouble hearing anything.
    - awongh 10y ago
      this. I find stuff like brain.fm too minimal, and not engaging enough, personally. Interesting how everyone has a personal threshold of not engaging enough / too engaging. I wish there was some reliable resource I could go to to find 3-5 hour blocks of edm type music.
      - rjbwork 10y ago
- splintercell 10y ago
  I have not been diagnosed with ADHD, nor do I think I have all the symptoms of it (the way I see people on ADHD subreddit talk about), but I totally understand the thing you're describing. I do have a problem with focus while working. One thing which really helps me is if I put on some audiobook I don't really care to focus on too much about, or some podcast or lecture, but it helps me focus. Not all the time, but say I am working on solving a coding challenge, then the part where I figure out which solution would work, I can't listen to anything and I need to focus, but the part where I actually implement the solution(especially if I have implemented something like that many times) then I can only do it if there is something else to distract other parts of my mind.
  - lerpa 10y ago
    Exactly, I don't get the people that listen to whale music for coding. It's just... boring and makes me want to sleep... If I need silence let there be silence, otherwise I enjoy some podcasts or music that pumps me up.
hyperpape 10y ago
For (a), you say "speech/sounds" but link to a source that only mentions speech. Is the effect definitely there with non-speech sounds. I assume it is, if we include sounds like a jackhammer, but does it apply across the board? Subjectively, I find that instrumental music is much better for me than the alternative.
- closed 10y ago
  I grabbed this from the first review article that popped up on google[1], so buyer beware. It says that non-repetitive sounds in general may create the effect: Concerning tasks that do not involve auditory targets, studies with adults have consistently shown that especially short-term memory is sensitive to negative effects of noise. Immediate serial recall of visually presented verbal items is reliably impaired by task-irrelevant sounds (for reviews see Hughes and Jones, 2001; Beaman, 2005; Schlittmeier et al., 2012). Impairments occur with single talker speech and non-speech sounds such as tones or instrumental music, but not with continuous broadband noise or babble noise. This so-called irrelevant sound effect (ISE) occurs reliably even with low-intensity sounds, with meaningless speech (e.g., speech in a language unknown to participants), and when sound presentation is confined to a rehearsal phase after encoding of the list items. However, the ISE magnitude is determined by inherent properties of the irrelevant sound. Recall performance is specifically impaired by sounds with a changing-state characteristic, i.e., by auditory streams which consist of distinct auditory–perceptive objects that vary consecutively. For example, irrelevant sounds consisting of different syllables or tones evoke an ISE, whereas steady state sounds, e.g., continuous broadband noise or repetitions of single syllables or tones, have a minor or no effect. In general, I've seen the argument that removing the effect can happen through habituating to repeated sounds, but also seem to recall some people showing that prolonged exposure to the irrelevant speech/stimuli before a task can also remove the effect--so maybe people wouldn't suffer as much with stimuli they're familiar with playing in the background. (there's also the issue of the things people actually do vs laboratory tasks). [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3757288/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3757288/
  - hyperpape 10y ago
    Thanks.
3chelon 10y ago
Thanks for the info. Sounds like I might have some level of ADHD based on those symptoms, esp. the squirming, which I've never been able to explain before!
- closed 10y ago
  No problem! I can stay still for hours on difficult tasks, but am all over the place for mundane things. Just considering the spectrum of things people use for ADHD (accountability w/others -> stimulating music -> caffeine -> prescription drugs) has been helpful for figuring out ways to power through boring things.

by closed 10y ago

Klathmon 10y ago

I have ADHD, and it's really difficult to describe to people how the "self stimulation" works. It's almost like I need to keep part of my brain busy so the other "quieter" part can work. Music, driving, pacing around, and to a lesser extent fidgeting or tapping can all "placate" that part of my brain so the other can actually do work. I'll even do things like play music while listening to a talk or presentation while working, because without the music keeping me "busy" I just can't focus on the topic of the talk.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
sosuke 10y ago
Great phrasing of the feeling. I started listening to e-books, fiction, after finding that my programming thoughts don't really intersect my verbal thoughts. The benefit being I don't get distracted reading anything else because my speech center is already occupied. The only time I have to pause the music is during a planning session where I do have internal dialogue. ATTN paki123: I can't reply to your comment but you should visit and read http://addforums.com/ http://addforums.com/ for support, drug reviews/experiences and tips
- paki123 10y ago
  Holy shit, I do this too. Is there a resource(besides adderall) that can help me deal with this and understand this better?
  - Klathmon 10y ago
    I "vouched" for your comment as it was showing up dead for some reason... I can second sosuke, addforums.com was a great resource. I haven't been there for a long time though.
    - ThrustVectoring 10y ago
      It probably showed up dead because of automated anti-spam tools that pick up on spammy keywords. Naming a scheduled medication by name is probably more than enough to trigger something like that.
      - Klathmon 10y ago
        I don't think that's quite it. All of the comments in their user profile are marked dead back a few hundred days. I read them over, nothing looked overtly spammy or troll-ey, so I vouched for this comment as it seemed genuine. I do think it's an anti-spam or anti-troll measure, but it looks like it's a mishit in this case. That being said, is there anyone where we read up on what vouching/dead/etc... means on HN? Maybe one of the mods or someone can help explain some of it (or let me know that they won't explain it for anti-spam purposes...).
        nitrogen 10y ago
        You probably saw this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10298512 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10298512 That doesn't explain exactly how vouching works, and I think the "strength" of a vouch might be changed per-user (it no longer seems to do the same thing it used to, for me, at least).
closed 10y ago
Those things really resonate with me. In some ways it feels like a person riding an slightly unruly elephant, and the music is to appease it.
yesiamyourdad 10y ago
I think that explains my taste in "focus" music. Most of the "focus" playlists are ambient or classical. The ambient stuff is just there; it doesn't really engage my brain. It's like traffic noise. Classical is... I don't know, too structural? I find it distracting. My brain switches on when I'm listening to stuff that's challenging - dissonant, rhythmically odd, fast paced, changing tempos. But I've thought the same thing, that kind of music engages some part of my brain so the part that's more linear-thinking can get on with business uninterrupted. So my "focus" playlist is post-bop Jazz with things like Chick Corea (especially Three Quartets), Steps Ahead, Keith Jarrett's Standards Trio stuff, early Wynton Marsalis. Some Coltrane, but not so much his meditative stuff - things like Giant Steps make my brain engage. I can't multitask like that though - I can't have two auditory sources. When I'm talking to people, I have trouble picking out voices when surrounded by a crowd, or with several people talking at once. It's like I'm trying to make sense of all the background noise and can't pick up what's being said directly to me.
- Klathmon 10y ago
  It's very similar for me. My music is EDM like many other coders, but it's more live performances, as they just don't end. Generally i'll grab a playlist of like 3 or 4 live shows from the same producer and i'll play them back to back. But the multitasking thing is a bit different for me, it's more one-sense-at-a-time for me. My wife has laughed at me before because she'll come home and i'll be watching a youtube talk on one screen, playing music over the speakers, and programming something mundane all at the same time, but if 2 people are talking at the same time I have trouble hearing anything.
  - awongh 10y ago
    this. I find stuff like brain.fm too minimal, and not engaging enough, personally. Interesting how everyone has a personal threshold of not engaging enough / too engaging. I wish there was some reliable resource I could go to to find 3-5 hour blocks of edm type music.
    - rjbwork 10y ago
splintercell 10y ago
I have not been diagnosed with ADHD, nor do I think I have all the symptoms of it (the way I see people on ADHD subreddit talk about), but I totally understand the thing you're describing. I do have a problem with focus while working. One thing which really helps me is if I put on some audiobook I don't really care to focus on too much about, or some podcast or lecture, but it helps me focus. Not all the time, but say I am working on solving a coding challenge, then the part where I figure out which solution would work, I can't listen to anything and I need to focus, but the part where I actually implement the solution(especially if I have implemented something like that many times) then I can only do it if there is something else to distract other parts of my mind.
- lerpa 10y ago
  Exactly, I don't get the people that listen to whale music for coding. It's just... boring and makes me want to sleep... If I need silence let there be silence, otherwise I enjoy some podcasts or music that pumps me up.

hyperpape 10y ago

For (a), you say "speech/sounds" but link to a source that only mentions speech. Is the effect definitely there with non-speech sounds. I assume it is, if we include sounds like a jackhammer, but does it apply across the board? Subjectively, I find that instrumental music is much better for me than the alternative.

closed 10y ago
I grabbed this from the first review article that popped up on google[1], so buyer beware. It says that non-repetitive sounds in general may create the effect: Concerning tasks that do not involve auditory targets, studies with adults have consistently shown that especially short-term memory is sensitive to negative effects of noise. Immediate serial recall of visually presented verbal items is reliably impaired by task-irrelevant sounds (for reviews see Hughes and Jones, 2001; Beaman, 2005; Schlittmeier et al., 2012). Impairments occur with single talker speech and non-speech sounds such as tones or instrumental music, but not with continuous broadband noise or babble noise. This so-called irrelevant sound effect (ISE) occurs reliably even with low-intensity sounds, with meaningless speech (e.g., speech in a language unknown to participants), and when sound presentation is confined to a rehearsal phase after encoding of the list items. However, the ISE magnitude is determined by inherent properties of the irrelevant sound. Recall performance is specifically impaired by sounds with a changing-state characteristic, i.e., by auditory streams which consist of distinct auditory–perceptive objects that vary consecutively. For example, irrelevant sounds consisting of different syllables or tones evoke an ISE, whereas steady state sounds, e.g., continuous broadband noise or repetitions of single syllables or tones, have a minor or no effect. In general, I've seen the argument that removing the effect can happen through habituating to repeated sounds, but also seem to recall some people showing that prolonged exposure to the irrelevant speech/stimuli before a task can also remove the effect--so maybe people wouldn't suffer as much with stimuli they're familiar with playing in the background. (there's also the issue of the things people actually do vs laboratory tasks). [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3757288/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3757288/
- hyperpape 10y ago
  Thanks.

3chelon 10y ago

Thanks for the info. Sounds like I might have some level of ADHD based on those symptoms, esp. the squirming, which I've never been able to explain before!

closed 10y ago
No problem! I can stay still for hours on difficult tasks, but am all over the place for mundane things. Just considering the spectrum of things people use for ADHD (accountability w/others -> stimulating music -> caffeine -> prescription drugs) has been helpful for figuring out ways to power through boring things.