The impact of self-selected background music on sustained attention: Examining the roles of arousal and task engagement

The impact of background music (BGM) on vigilance task performance remains controversial. While previous research has focused on arousal as a mediating variable, recent studies suggest that task engagement also influences the effects of BGM on vigilance performance. This study investigated the impact of self-selected BGM on arousal, task engagement, and task performance during a vigilance task. A total of 36 participants completed the Sustained Attention to Response Task (SART) and questionnaires assessing energetic and tense arousal as well as four dimensions of task engagement (emotional, behavioral, state, and cognitive). Results indicated that, compared to silence, self-selected BGM significantly increased participants’ energetic arousal and task engagement, while decreasing response time variability. Furthermore, exploratory hierarchical Bayesian modeling analyses revealed that the effect of BGM on the false alarm rate was well explained by a model in which task engagement mediates the relationship between the presence of BGM and the false alarm rate. These findings emphasize the importance of considering the multifaceted nature of task engagement in future research examining the effects of BGM on cognitive performance, particularly in sustained attention tasks.