This is Scientific American's 60 Second Science.

I'm Christopher Intagiyata.

Let's play a word game.

What word can be put in front of the word stick, maker, and point to make three new compound words.

Again, that's stick, maker, and point.

Ready for the answer?

Match.

So that would then combine to make the words,

matchstick, matchmaker, and matchpoint.

Emma Threadgold, a cognitive psychologist at the University of Central Lancashire in England.

The point of tasks like these, she says, is to measure creativity, and if you didn't get it right away, don't worry.

Neither did I.

Maybe you had music playing, as you thought about the words.

And of course many people do listen to music while they work. So Threadgold in her colleagues

recently used such word puzzles to investigate whether listening to music affects creativity.

They asked volunteers to solve 19 puzzles while listening to either a foreign language tune, an instrumental version of the same song, a familiar English language song.

A familiar English language song or silence. The results in every case

volunteers listening to music solved fewer puzzles than their

counterparts in total quiet, suggesting that background music

does not really aid this kind of creative task.

Maybe because these puzzles require some sort of mental speech rehearsal, like trying out different word combos using your inner voice.

And therefore, they're more susceptible to changing state sounds such as music in comparison

...