Experimental study reveals background music lyrics do not impair first- or second-language reading comprehension in ESL learners, challenging process-interference distraction models.
Background music with lyrics can be a prevalent distraction in environments where people study or read while music plays. However, such effects on reading comprehension across different language contexts remain insufficiently investigated. Guided by the duplex‐mechanism account of 1. tory distraction, we explored the graded interaction of background music lyrics and task language on reading comprehension performance among Cantonese ESL learners. Ninety‐six Cantonese ESL learners were tested on L1 and L2 reading comprehension tasks under a silent condition and three background music conditions: L1, L2, and foreign. Contrary to our hypotheses, lyrical language neither affected reading comprehension nor interacted with text language. These findings suggest that the behavioral predictions derived from the interference‐by‐process account were not supported under the present conditions, while highlighting the need for process‐sensitive measures to directly examine the underlying mechanisms of auditory distraction during reading.
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Ding et al. (2026) studied this question.
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