The Effects of Listening to Certain Kinds of Music On Test Performance and Test Anxiety on a Special Education Student

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of listening to certain kinds of music on test performance and test anxiety on a Special Education student. The participant in this study is enrolled in an urban, inner city school in Baltimore. The participant functions academically at a fourth-grade level. This study was a case study with a single subject. The data collected involved three distinct music conditions, a student’s homework packet of three worksheets, observable behaviors during the academic task, an assessment of his testing behaviors, the accuracy of his scores on the worksheets and his musical preferences. The data on the pretest and post-test were analyzed using the participant’s musical preferences. The study lasted over three days, with the participant completing the academic task in 20-minute sessions. The participant performed poorly on worksheets with no music and with fast music. The null hypothesis indicated that listening to music the student self-identifies as relaxing will result in the same levels of test anxiety and test performance compared to listening to music the student does not identify as relaxing or listening to no music at all during testing. The null hypothesis was not retained.