# An Eye-Tracking Study on Text Comprehension While Listening to Music: Preliminary Results
## 1 Introduction
In addition, there are studies which suggest that background music may enhance the learners' emotional states by helping to regulate their valence and arousal levels during reading [1; 6]. On the other hand, other studies have reported negative effects on reading comprehension when background music includes genres such as hip-hop, slow-tempo music, fast and loud music, or familiar non-lyrical music [29]. The discrepancies in these findings may be attributed to variations in musical characteristics, including loudness, tempo, structure, complexity, genre, familiarity, and whether the music contains lyrics or is purely instrumental [30]. Moreover, individual differences among the participants, such as musical preferences and expertise, may further contribute to these inconsistencies [1; 6]. Furthermore, one possible explanation for this discrepancy is that the reading comprehension is influenced by a multitude of factors. As a complex cognitive process, reading is shaped by elements such as word recognition, reading strategies, comprehension skills, and motivation [31]. Finally, understanding the readers' attitudes towards music offers a psychological perspective on reading conditions that may differ from objective reading outcomes, such as text comprehension. From a cognitive science standpoint, an individual's perception or self-assessment (e.g., perceived levels of understanding or difficulty) does not always align with objective behavioral measures, including visual patterns and reading comprehension [10]. Therefore, beyond assessing reading comprehension, evaluating reading attitudes--by exploring perceived aspects such as difficulty, confidence, and preference may provide additional insights into text comprehension. Previous research on the subject has highlighted the impact of reading attitudes on comprehension. Specifically, intrinsic motivation, perceived difficulty, and self-assessed confidence in comprehension have been found to influence reading performance and achievement [10]. Given the significance of investigating visual patterns, reading performance, and reading attitudes, this study examines these variables to gain a deeper understanding of how text comprehension is affected by different types of music and a certain type of background noise, using the eye-tracking technology. In this study, in order to investigate whether the claim that certain types of music improve text comprehension is true, we have chosen to focus not on a specific type of music or certain aspects of it, but on personal preferences: reading while listening to preferred music and reading while listening to non-preferred music. In addition, as students often choose to study in environments where there is noise from people talking, text comprehension will be studied in the presence of recorded noise from a cafe. Finally, text comprehension is studied under the condition of silence. In order to study the reading process as it unfolds, we used eye-tracking technology. In particular, the research hypotheses are proposed in the following sequence, which reflects the process from visual patterns to reading performance and to reading attitudes.