Question: Do sounds/distractions have a large effect on a person’s ability to problem solve?

Alex Baxendale answered on 18 Nov 2021:

Definitely, our concentration is very limited to only holding a little bit of information in mind at once in a special type of short-term memory called Working Memory. Distractions pull your attention away from what it is you’re doing and can cause you to replace whatever information you have stored in your Working Memory, causing you to forget things. This is the main reason that math anxiety causes issues whilst performing math; you have negative thoughts that force their way into your mind and distract you, which eats up your mental resources and prevents you from problem solving. Sounds are particularly strong here too, some research that we have done in our lab found that listening to, and reading aloud instructions causes people to perform better than if they just do everything in silence – both conditions where they hear the instructions caused people to perform much better in tasks, which we believe may be evidence for the brain prioritizing processing auditory information over written information.

So yes, you’re absolutely right! Distractions, and especially sounds, can have a huge impact on problem solving!