THE MOZART EFFECT

Alexandria Brown, Madeline Morgante, Anna

Hampton, and Elizabeth Warren

Introduction■ The Mozart Effect refers to the inclination that spatial-temporal abilities improve

after listening to music by Mozart (Rausher, Shaw, & Ky, 1993, 1995)

■ Reports in other journals have indicated that there is great consideration to how listening to music/music lessons improve other abilities as well

■ If associations are confirmed, then there could be great implications in other aspects of life (for example, enhanced performance for pilots and engineers)

■ Facilitation in spacial-temporal performance following music exposure is short-term and temporary (10-15 min), but there are longer-term effects for music lessons

■ Previous studies have not distinguished between the two

■ The purpose of this study was to complete a more comprehensive explanation for the short-term phenomena

■ Rauscher et al. have proposed that the Mozart Effect can be explained by the "trionmodel" (Leng and Shaw, 1991)

– This says that exposure to complex music compositions excites cortical firing similar to those used for spatial-temporal reasoning, and therefore, spacial-temporal tasks are improved due to exposure to this music

Introduction Cont...

■ The Mozart Effect is similar to transfer or priming

– Example: the effect could be consideredan instance of positive, nonspecific transfer across domains and modalities

■ It is difficult to situate in a context of known cognitive phenomena

■ Stough, Kerkin, Bates and Mangan (1994) failed to replicate the findings by Rauscher et al.

■ Rauscher and Shaw (1998) came to the conclusion that the effect is obtainable only with spacial-temporal tasks

Goals of Experiment

■ Goal in Experiment 1 was to replicate and extend the basic findings of Raushcer et al. (1993, 1995)

■ Goal in Experiment 2 was to test the hypothesis that the Mozart effect is actually a consequence of participants' preference for one testing condition over another

– Assumption that better performance would follow the preferred condition

Methods

■ Participants: 84 undergraduates from two universities in Canada; 56

participated in experiment one and 28 participated in experiment 2

■ Stimulus presentation and response recording was controlled by a

custom program that was installed on the computer

■ During testing listeners received a stereo signal through headphones

inside a booth

Methods

■ Participants initiated a 10 minute listening session using a mouse then completed their responses to the following PF&C task which contained a mixture of 17 questions from the Stanford-Binet Intelligence test and some questions the researchers created for the study.

■ Participants were presented with one of the 17 questions for a 1 minute period and then had to choose an answer from the 5 possible choices

■ Each session took approximately 25 minutes to complete

■ Each individual participated in one testing condition and one control condition on separate days within a two week span

https://www.indiabix.com/non-verbal-reasoning/paper-cutting/

Methods: Experiment 1

■ The first 10 minutes of Mozart’s Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major K and the

first 10 minutes of Schubert’s Fantasia for Piano, Four Hands, in F Minor.

Both pieces were from the same compact disc and played by the same two

pianists, then rerecorded onto a Macintosh computer.

■ 28 participants were assigned to Mozart and the other 28 were assigned to

Schubert

■ control condition was sitting in silence for 10 minutes

Methods: Experiment 2

■ The treatment condition was the first 10 minutes of Mozart’s Sonata

for Two Pianos in D Major K

■ The control condition was listening to 10 minutes of "The Last Rung on

the Ladder" by Stephen King

■ After the second testing session, participants were asked

which testing condition they preferred

Results■ Experiment 1

- Mixed design ANOVA

• Participants listening to music (i.e. Mozart and Schubert) showed significantly higher scores on the spatial-temporal task than when sitting in silence.

• Testing order showed improvement of scores from the first session to the second session.

• This experiment successfully demonstrated Rauscher's original study while in a laboratory.

• Whether the participant listened to Mozart or Schubert, it made little difference for scores.

Results■ Experiment 2

- ANOVA

• There was no significant main effect for condition while also showing no interaction between condition and test order.

• Testing order showed improvement of scores from first session to second session

• Tasks were performed better when participants who listened to their preferred condition. Preference does interact with condition.

• Those who listened to Mozart and preferred Mozart did significantly better than any of the other conditions.

Results

Results

Discussion■ The purpose of this study was to examine how

exposure to music effected performance on the

given spatial-temporal task.

■ As mentioned previously, the researchers in

Experiment 1 found that participant's performance

on the spatial-temporal task was better when they

listened to either Mozart or Schubert than in the

control condition.

▪ This caused the researchers to conclude that

the "Mozart Effect" does not necessarily have

anything to do with Mozart.

▪ Further, it is implicated in this experiment that a

similar effect could be found when any positive

stimulus is paired with a less engaging

stimulus.

Discussion (cont.)

■ This last claim was examined in Experiment 2 when researchers

substituted silence as a control for listening to a short story.

▪ Participants in this study performed better when they

listened to their preferred stimulus.

▪ These results suggest two possibilities:

■ The first is that the passive listening of the

pleasant/preferred stimulus aided in the individual's

performance on the spatial-temporal task.

■ Secondly, the 10 minute consequence of listening to

the unpleasant/boring stimulus may have inhibited

their performance.

Future Research▪ Although this study gave researchers a solid foundation, there is still a great deal of room

left for further research on the Mozart Effect.

▪ Past studies have shown that music can significantly effect an individual's mood/arousal.

▪ It has been shown that "happy" music induces feelings of happiness while "sad"

music induces feelings of sadness (Parrott & Sabini, 1990)

▪ How might these factors have affected our study?

▪ In Experiment 1, the researchers had participants listen to pleasing music (Mozart or Schubert) in the experimental condition; and in the control, participants sat in silence for

10 minutes.

▪ It is possible that each condition caused the individual's mood/arousal levels to change which also affected their performance on the spatial-temporal task.

▪ Future research could test this possibility by measuring the participant's mood/arousal throughout the study using various tools (e.g. surveys, heart rate monitors, EEG's, etc.) to see if a correlation exists between mood/arousal and performance on the spatial-temporal task.

Conclusion■ In conclusion, the researchers found no evidence to suggest that listening to Mozart

increases performance on spatial-temporal tasks more than listening to other pleasant/engaging auditory stimuli.

Resource

Nantais, Kristin M. & Schellenberg, E. Glenn. (1999). The mozart effect: an artifact of

preference. Psychological Science, 10(4), 370-373.