In order to fully understand those results, we also need to talk about working memory capacity. Essentially, working memory capacity refers to how much information you are able to hold in mind and process at any given time. People vary on this trait; some people have high working memory capacity and other people have low working memory capacity. So Halin et al. also looked at how these results might vary depending on someone’s working memory capacity. What they did was looked at each person’s “level of distractibility” (basically just the difference between how they did when it was silent vs. not) and checked to see if that was related to working memory capacity when reading the easy font or hard font. For the easy font, as working memory capacity went up, distractibility went down. The more someone can hold in mind, the less likely they are to be bothered by background noise. But for the hard to read font, it didn’t matter. When you really have to concentrate to understand something, it doesn’t matter who you are, distractions are less of a problem.

Bottom line

As with a majority of the research we talk about (And certainly the 6 strategies we promote!), when learning is more difficult, recall is often better. Here the more difficult the task, the better students were able to learn it in a distracting environment. So, what advice can we provide for students based on this work? Essentially, for difficult material, it doesn’t matter who you are or where you are, you’re going to put in a lot of effort to learn that material and that concentration will help you remember the material. However, if you need to learn something that is somewhat easy, you may be tempted to study with friends around or in a noisy environment (because hey, it’s easy). It turns out that you are probably going to remember less and/or it’s going to take a lot longer to process that information. This is particularly true for some people and may not apply to those with high working memory capacity. To be on the safe side, you should probably study without someone reading to you in the background!