It has long been believed that music can evoke specific thoughts and feelings from the listener. But can music –specifically the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart- summon hidden intelligences within the human brain? That is the question scientists are trying to answer. In the mid-nineties, scientists, Frances Rauscher, Gordon Shaw and Katherine Ky, claimed that music could boost the listener’s intelligence up to 9 points (Steele 2). To many, this allegation seemed a bit far-fetched and soon other researchers began recreating the Rauscher, Shaw, and Ky experiment in hopes of discrediting their findings. The conclusions that resulted confirmed that the skeptics were right: the evidence was inconclusive and revealed that music did not make the listener “smarter”. These findings, however, did not stop weary parents from stocking up on Baby Mozart CD’s in hopes that their little one will one day grow up to be the next Einstein.
The original experiment of Rauscher, Shaw, and Ky was published in the 1993 issue of Nature. Thirty-six college students were to listen to ten minutes of Mozart’s Sonata in D major for Two Pianos, K488. After listening to the music, they were given a paper cutting and folding test. They were to look at a piece of paper that was folded several times and had pieces cut out of it. Then, they would mentally unfold the paper and identify the correct shape (Linton 1). The students who listened to Mozart showed an increase of 8-9 IQ points compared to students who did the test without listening to music. However, it was also stated that the “effect was temporary and did not last more than fifteen minutes” (Gorman 1 ).
Researchers from the University of Auckland in New Zealand wanted to replicate the Rauscher, Sha...
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...ozart’s music is about “becoming a human being and living” (Linton 4). Whatever the reason, Mozart will always be the one credited with the ability to transform the minds of the listener; whether it is their intelligence or their mood. In some ways, the Mozart effect is real in the sense that the listener is moved and changed after listening to the enchanting compositions of one of the most talented composers of his time.
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Steele, Kenneth. “The “Mozart Effect”: An Example of the Scientific Method in Operation”. Psychology Teacher Network Nov.-Dec. 2001: 2-5. Print.
Wade, Michael. “The Effects of the Mozart Effect” Cross Section 4.0 (2010): 52-56. Print.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is perhaps the most well-known composer of all time. Countless accounts of his life have been created through the years, and all of them approach the topic of his life with a slightly different perspective. Amadeus provides a humorous and insightful look into the life of Mozart through the flashbacks of an elderly Italian man named Salieri. In his old age, Salieri confesses to a priest that he felt God taunting him throughout life because he always had a profound appreciation for Mozart’s music, but yet could never produce anything like it. Therefore, he turned bitter and spent his life trying to ruin Mozart and his career. Through Salieri’s lense, the audience learns about Mozart’s unique personality. Mozart is shown in the movie as a musical prodigy with an impeccable ability to play and compose. However, Mozart also has a childish, socially awkward side that causes him to be misunderstood by many adults. He lacks practicality and appreciation for social graces, instead preferring to make inappropriate jokes and attend wild parties. Our class’s textbook, The Enjoyment of Music, also
..., D. (1993). Music and the Mind. MENC, Retrieved August 25, 2003 from MENC, Academic Achievement and Music database.
Since this study has yet to be thoroughly examined and replicated, it is hard to give weight to the argument. The fact that the study does not involve infant participants also contributes to the issue that studies involving babies are lacking, and thus it is difficult to support the theory that babies are able to be “made smarter” by the effects of Mozart’s music.
There is limited literature centered on an infant age group to support the notion that babies will become smarter through exposure to Mozart’s symphonies. Rauscher, Shaw and Ky (1993) devised an experiment initiating the theory now known as the ‘Mozart Effect’. The study examined the possible effect the exposure to three differing conditions; silence, a relaxation tape and a Mozart piece had on college student’s ability to perform spatial tasks, and hence the effect on their spatial IQ scores (Rauscher et al. 1993). Rauscher et al. (1993) concluded there was an increase in these scores for studen...
Mannes, Elena. "www.npr.org/2011/06/01/136859090/the-power-of-music-to-affect-the-brain." Mannes, Elena. The Power of Music to Affect the Brain. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2011.
Parncutt, Richard, and Gary E. McPherson. The Science and Psychology of Music Performance. New York: Oxford, 2002. Print.
As Bob Marley once said, “One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain.” Studies shown that classical music, specifically Mozart, help you engage in your studies better and as a result showed high test scores according to a test scientist at Stanford University held. Did you ever imagine how powerful a piece that was composed in the 1780’s could be?
The idea of the Mozart effect began in 1993 with a study conducted by Rauscher, Shaw & Ky. This study involved 36 university students taking three different IQ spatial reasoning tasks and for each test used either Mozart’s sonata for two pianos in D major and relaxation music was played, silence was also used. The results of this experiment showed that students who had listened to the music of Mozart had better results for the spacial reasoning tests in comparison to silence or relaxation music. The results also showed that the impact of Mozart’s music was only temporary and only lasted for 10-15 minutes. Overall this study was very basic and had numerous flaws such as the sample size and also the variety of tests used to look at the impact of music (Rauscher, Shaw & Ky, 1993). In 1997 Don Campbell’s book The Mozart effect popularised the claim that music makes children smarter. This book created a public interest in music and brain development. The book uses Rauscher’s experiment as an example of what Mozart’s music can do which in this experiment shows a temporary increase in spatial reasoning, this however was misinterpreted by the public as an increase in IQ. The popularisation of the...
Scientists and skeptics have different beliefs about the benefits of the Mozart Effect. Scientists found that Mozart “enhanced synchrony between the neural activity in the right frontal and left tempoparietal cortical areas of the brain,” and that this effect continued for “over 12 minutes” (Rauscher & Shaw, 1998, p. 839). Based on these results, Leng and Shaw speculated that “listening to Mozart could be stimulating the neural firing patterns in the parts of the cerebral cortex responsible for spatial-temporal skills, which subsequently enhances the spatial-temporal abilities that are housed in those parts of the cortex”[Dowd]. However nonbelievers suggest that the research is incomplete and misleading. The Irvine study that launched the phenomenon has been widely criticized. The Startling results announced by the initial paper were misleading. First, the researchers claimed that the undergraduates improved on all three spatial-reasoning tests. But as Shaw later clarified, the only enhancement came from one task—paper folding and cutting. Further, the researchers presented the data in the form...
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