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The usual home study conditions of 387 students in Grades 5 through 9 were surveyed. Most students, regardless of reading skill level, selected quiet settings to perform reading assignments, but did mathematics and written work with a radio, stereo, or TV on. Junior high students were somewhat more likely than elementary school students to prefer quiet settings for reading, and to prefer radio or stereo to TV while doing mathematics. Students’ ratings regarding the effects of different settings on their studying indicated that, overall, TV was considered to be a moderate distractor, but radio or stereo was generally regarded as beneficial. The results suggest that the motivational, as well as the cognitive effects of "distracting" stimuli in real-life study situations may need to be considered.
Patton et al. (Sun,) studied this question.