How Music Regulates Learning Readiness: An Emotion–Reward–Cognition Framework and Its Educational Boundaries

This critical narrative review and theoretical framework explains the conditional role of music in learning by shifting the focus from whether music directly improves academic achievement to how it regulates learning readiness. Learning readiness refers to the proximal psychological–neural conditions surrounding entry into a specific learning task, including emotional stability, attentional accessibility, motivational activation, cognitive-load fit, and interpersonal safety. Drawing on research on musical emotion, the reward system, cognitive load, learning engagement, and classroom interaction, the review proposes a path model linking musical features, emotion–reward–cognition mechanisms, learning readiness, and learning processes or outcomes. Music is more likely to facilitate low-load tasks, emotion-startup tasks, and collaborative-expression tasks, whereas it may interfere with tasks involving high language load or high executive-control demands. Educational applications should therefore be designed around the task, the learner’s state, individual differences, and the classroom context.