Comment by jeremyleach

Actively listening to music engages pattern recognition, prediction and working memory in the listener. It makes sense that this would disrupt concurrent 'creative' or more realistically, pattern matching tasks. However, this experiment does not seem to cover non-concurrent listening to music, aka the Mozart effect. It could well be that listening to music enhances creative ability when subsequently not listening to music. So that regular music listening enhances ability to make creative pattern associations over the long term.