On Tue, 26 Nov 2002, Kat wrote: > 1. Are any of you musicians? I had a really weird moment at a Renaissance > faire last spring - I was listening to a pipe & drum band play a lively tune > along with a non-musician partner; after a handful of measures he turned to > me and said, "is the snare in any way at all related to what the bagpipes > are playing?" I was astounded; the snares were playing a rich counter-rythm > and apparrently he couldn't hear the relationship *at all*; the quantity of > the difference in cognition was suprising. I am curious to know if being / > not being a musician affects the types of music that work or don't work with > your multi-tasking in any predictable way. Yes, I am a musician, and I agree, somewhat. I think almost anyone can enjoy a good piece of music, but there are some songs that I like that non-musicians despise because they don't necessarily sound outstanding, but they do something musically that I like or find intriguing. And likewise, I can't explain to some non-musical people what kinds of qualities I look for in some white noise music. > Are you actually processing the TV/music at the same time you're doing work? > or is it white noise in this case? Depends on the TV show, music, and work being done. When I'm just doing some search & replace work or fixing bad code where I already know what the problem is, then I generally process both. Meaning, I can remember the story and dialogue or tune and also remember what I changed and what I did. If I'm writing original content or creating new pages with new codes/scripts, it's more white noise. > Do you listen to music with clear and obvious lyrics, or no? If you don't, > that would seem to imply that verbalized language interferes somewhat with > the part of your brain that's processing the book. That is certainly the > case with me; I can follow a conversation or process lyrics and read at the > same time, but my reading speed drops by about 75% when I do. Sometimes. If it's a CD I'm REALLY familiar with or if the words are in another language, I can read to it. But I generally prefer ones w/o clear lyrics or w/o lyrics at all. :) So I guess I do have a little trouble with language interfering, but under conditions. > > > If I don't, any background noise will distract > > > me. > I'm guessing that the TV ends up in the same category as "background noise"? Unfamiliar shows, yes. I'm in the habit of watching sitcoms and movies I've already seen. Otherwise I'm going to want to hear every conversation outside. > > > I guess because I've trained my brain to multi-task? > > In the case of your computer work, that would seem to be the case if you are > actually processing the TV/music. Query, does chatting include in-person, > online, phone, or some combination thereof? In the case of you reading... it > would seem as if your multi-tasking isn't working the way you want it to if > the background noises can actually distract you from your reading. Um, all of the above? eMail, AIM (and like systems), phone, in-person, eavesdropping... ****** NyteMuse "Call her life unnatural, feel her undead breath. Color her black for sorcery, color her gray for death." AIM: NyteMuse139 / ICQ: #21966269 (NyteMuse) MSN: NyteMuse / Yahoo!ID: NyteMuse http://www.crowfire.com