Instrumental background music mitigates self-control fatigue and improves performance in prolonged mental work (Dataset)

This repository contains the raw data used for a research study titled "Instrumental Background Music Facilitates Task Endurance and Cognitive Performance: Insights from Ego Depletion". This repository contains two Microsoft Excel files, as follows:

• ed_music_feature_analysis.csv
• ed_raw_data.xlsx

Files Description

File: ed_music_feature_analysis.csv

This file contains the specific feature analysis for each music stimulus (N = 17) used in the experiment. These features (retrieved from Spotify's "Get Track's Audio Features" API) are:

• energy level
• valence
• tempo

The Spotify ID of each music track is also recorded in this file, to facilitate future replication of the experiment.

File: ed_raw_data.xlsx

This file contains the raw data from the experiment (N = 41). There are two tabs in this file. The "data" tab records all raw data, whilst the "index" tab contains all the abbreviations (with their explanations) used in the document, and when relevant, a brief description of how the outcome measures were calculated.

In the "data" tab, each row corresponds to a single participant and each column to a single variable. The variables about sample characteristics include:

• Age
• Self-identified gender
• Area of study
• Level of English proficiency
• Whether the participant has specific neurodiversity
• Personality traits
• Musicianship
• Self-reported everyday music listening habits
• Self-reported perceived (positive and negative) impact of music listening while studying

The variables about experimental conditions and outcomes measures include:

• Each participant's assigned experimental condition (music or control)
• Reading comprehension performance (measured in terms of the number of questions answered and a final score)
• Pre- and post-reading positive affect, negative affect, and motivation for cognition
• (for the music condition) personal perception of the music they heard during the experiment
• Level of ego depletion (measured based on Stroop interference)
• Verbal working memory (measured based on Reading Span Task performance)
• Divided attention capacity (measured based on Category Switch Task performance)

Notes.

1. Empty cells in between data are missing data (due to participant absentees).

2. See the "index" tab in ed_raw_data.xlsx for a detailed presentation and explanation of each recorded data.