Interview responses
Two primary categories emerged from the thematic analysis: effects of BGM on cognition and effects of BGM on emotion. A total of 280 excerpts were extracted from the responses and 29% (82 excerpts) were double coded by two independent researchers who were cognitive science graduate students. The inter-rater reliability was 0.94, as measured by Cohen’s kappa coefficient, implying an excellent level of agreement between codersThematic analysis results of interviews.Aggregated values for each Category and Sub-category are in bold and italics respectively.Some participants (42%) mentioned cognitive benefits of listening to BGM, such as music “helped me concentrate on what I was reading” (Participant #14), “blocked out noise in the environment” (#32), and “facilitated me to have a more efficient study” (#26). However, 41 (82%) of the participants reported negative effects of BGM on cognition, such as “music distracted my attention” and “I was unable to devote myself completely to the reading task” (#58). In particular, distraction might occur when the tracks contained lyrics, just as one participant commented: “I can't really read the words because I’ll pay attention to the lyrics.” (#53). Some impacts were neutral such as “music listening increased reading time” (#39) and “I would like to read longer as my favourite BGM was played” (#47). In addition, no impact was also mentioned. Several participants stated BGM had no impact on information processing, because “I was unaware that music was playing while I was reading” (#26), or they were able to “multitask by listening to music and reading at the same time” (#12).The participants indicated benefits of listening to BGM on emotion, such as “[listening to my favourite songs] increased my happiness” (#55), “aroused my energy” (#94), “I felt more relaxed and more comfortable” (#54), and “music calmed me down and helped me get into reading states” (#100). Nonetheless, several participants reported feeling “annoyed or uncomfortable” by “fast-tempo music” (#71) or “rock music” (#57), whereas some commented that “instrumental classical music” or “calming music” made them feel "tired and sleepy" (#94, #101). Last but not least, nearly one tenth of respondents stated that BGM had no effect on their mood (#73).