Learners with different working memory capacity
cognitive overload
REGRESSION
No significant correlation between working memory capacity (WMC) and passage comprehension accuracy was observed in either BGM or Silence conditions. However, we found positive correlations between WMC and reading time, fixation count, and regression count in the BGM condition (Table In summary, we found that, when reading with their self-selected BGM, learners with higher English proficiency, more frequent BGM usage during reading/self-learning, or lower WMC demonstrated eye movement patterns indicating a lower level of mental efforts. These findings can provide practical guidance for students to make personalized decisions on reading with BGM. First, students with high language proficiency and habit of listening to BGM in daily self-learning/reading would face little extra cognitive load, while enjoy benefits of BGM on longer enduring time. Second, students who are used to listening to BGM while studying can feel free to choose to study without BGM, since reading in silence will not affect their task performance, metacognition, or eye movements. Third, students with high WMC might face higher cognitive load when they read with BGM, but that does not affect their reading task performance or enjoyment with BGM.Our findings have practical implications for teachers and instructional designers. First, learning environment designers can leverage students’ preferred music to increase their enjoyment and motivation in reading activities. For example, a learning management system (e.g., Moodle) or an e-reader application (e.g., Perusall) can play a student’s preferred study music when he/she opens a document to read, creating an enjoyable and positive learning atmosphere. However, the use of BGM during learning should consider the type of learning tasks and the characteristics of the BGM to reduce potential cognitive overload and dissonance. For instance, the use of instrumental music (without lyrics) in the reading task may add less cognitive load as compared to utilizing verbal music (with lyrics)