[mcfrankline]

Not an expert on Cognition or anything.

This only works very well with novels. When i was younger, i made a quite terrible habit out of this. I read the entire Wheel of Times Series with "He lives in you(Diana Ross version). It got so bad, i couldn't read any Wheel of Time book without playing that. I read the initial Mistborn set with Viva Forever etc etc. I put a stop to it a few years ago.

What you have to realize is that, this works with only soft reading when you don't really need much "brain power" to process what you're reading. Playing epic music while reading Epic fantasy helps with the visualization process and scene buildup.

I don't see how anyone is going to retain long term memory playing Viva Forever while reading Donald Knuth's TAOCP but it's just MO. If you want a more indepth look at the topic, you should try out Barbara Oakley's "A mind for numbers". Touches briefly on these kinds of background distraction while reading/learning.

[omarsamfirst]

Somehow I've tried that with just one novel, but Im still curious how other personality manages to read while in autopilot listening to music in terms of deep learning.? Maybe, it really differs for everyone?