From: Nytemuse [mailto:nytemuse at auros.org] > reading, I don't watch TV, though. I DO listen to music, > preferably something that my brain perceives as "white noise" > (something familiar and not too distracting), if not white > noise itself. If I don't, any background noise will distract > me. I guess because I've trained my brain to multi-task? > And I live in an apartment complex with children and animals, > so there are MANY distractions. :) From: Matthew Hunter [mailto:matthew at infodancer.org] > Sometimes it helps, sometimes it hurts. It depends on how the > music complements the text, and how intrusive the music is. I > listen to very text-friendly music -- carefully chosen to occupy > a different part of my mental space than reading a book or > programming or writing does. Some kind of music or "white-noise" will help me doing non-fiction reading or study, programming, cleaning, etc. However, when writing I find it too distracting. When reading fiction, unless the book is especially unappealing, it doesn't matter what kind of external noise is going on. I tend to immerse completely, to the point I may not notice even if there are nearby explosions. :)