The Effect of a Driving Simulator on Analytical Music Listening
Droe, K. (2005). The Effect of a Driving Simulator on Analytical Music Listening. Research Perspectives in Music Education, 39-43.
The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of driving on analytical listening. Forty undergraduate music majors from a large university participated in the study. The participants were divided equally into two groups. The experimental group performed a driving simulator while listening to two musical selections. The control group listened to the same musical selections without the driving simulator. At the conclusion of two musical selections, participants answered questions that required analytical listening. The questions were about the instrumentation, dynamic contour, style period, meter and meaning of text. Overall, the control group performed better than the driving group on the analytical listening test. Means of individual questions were, in all cases, higher for the control group. The only individual test item that revealed a significant difference between the groups was the question related to dynamics.
