Researchs are included 103 people, have between the ages of 18-30, the others are between 60 - 75. The volunteers turn apart in memorization exercise and draw where they have to quickly match a photo of a face with a same face in the array of unfamiliar faces.Some put depands the exercise in silent others perform the tests while listening the wild noise,or instrumental Jazz,Blues,Classical and electronic.

 

Across each group the concerns of full set the background sound was distracting,but only older people performance suffer when the noice was present.For example older folks who did the face matching with music plan remenber 10% fewer faces, the result match out with the theory the elderly a less able to feel tryout was called distracting test irrelavent information.

 

In this case, the distracting info might have interfere with them storing the facial image in the first place,much less inpetting their ablity to remember a short while later.

 

Thanks for the minute,for scientific american 60 second science, I'm Eric Bariss.