Abstract

Listening to music for relaxation is common among students to counter the effects of stress or anxiety while completing difficult academic tasks. Some studies supporting this technique have shown that background music promotes cognitive performance while other studies have shown that listening to music while engaged in complex cognitive tasks can impair performance. This study focuses on the effect of music on the mental health among students of Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU) Ile-Ife, the study will also assess the effect of playing music at different volume levels and it effect on the cognitive abilities of college students completing academic tasks.

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

Background of the study
Music listening is one of the most enigmatic of human behaviors. Most common behaviors have a recognizable utility that can be plausibly traced to the practical motives of survival and procreation. Moreover, in the array of seemingly odd behaviors, few behaviors match music for commandeering so much time, energy, and money. Music listening is one of the most popular leisure activities. Music is a ubiquitous companion to people’s everyday lives. The enthusiasm for music is not a recent development. Recognizably musical activities appear to have been present in every known culture on earth, with ancient roots extending back 250,000 years or more (see Zatorre and Peretz, 2001). The ubiquity and antiquity of music has inspired considerable speculation regarding its origin and function.



Throughout history, scholars of various stripes have pondered the nature of music. Philosophers, psychologists, anthropologists, musicologists, and neuroscientists have proposed a number of theories concerning the origin and purpose of music and some have pursued scientific approaches to investigating them (e.g., Fitch, 2006; Peretz, 2006; Levitin, 2007; Schäfer and Sedlmeier, 2010). The origin of music is shrouded in prehistory. There is little physical evidence—like stone carvings or fossilized footprints—that might provide clues to music’s past. Necessarily, hypotheses concerning the original functions of music will remain speculative.

Nevertheless, there are a number of plausible and interesting conjectures that offer useful starting-points for investigating the functions of music. A promising approach to the question of music’s origins focuses on how music is used—that is, it’s various functions. In fact, many scholars have endeavored to enumerate various musical functions (see below). The assumption is that the function(s) that music is presumed to have served in the past would be echoed in at least one of the functions that music serves today. Of course, how music is used today need have no relationship with music’s function(s) in the remote past. Nevertheless, evidence from modern listeners might provide useful clues pertinent to theorizing about origins. Many students listen to music to alleviate the emotional effects of stress and anxiety when engaged in complex cognitive processing, such as studying for a test, completing homework assignments, or while reading and writing. This practice is so common that it would be beneficial for college students to understand the role that music plays on cognitive performance. Research demonstrating the effects of music on performance is well documented, but have shown ambiguous evidence on this matter. In studies conducted to learn about the effects of musical distraction on cognitive task performance, the findings have demonstrated the idea of music improving cognitive performance (Cockerton, Moore, & Norman, 1997), but there has also been research contradicting those results, where music was found distracting for participants performing cognitive tasks (Furnham & Bradley, 1997).

http://sprojectng.com/downloads/the-effect-of-music-on-mental-health-among-students-of-oau-ile-ife-nigeria/

FOR COMPLETE PROJECT TOPICS AND MATERIAL VISIT
www.sprojectng.com