Mozart's Effect On The Theory Of The Mozart Effect

The idea behind the “Mozart Effect” is that when babies listen to classical masterpieces, specifically Mozart, their brainpower will be enhanced which ultimately increases their intelligence. There are a myriad number of people who have tested this hypothesis and truly believe that the waves and the sounds engenders cognitive skills in the domain of learning. However, the real question is that do scientists substantiate this claim? Is there solid evidence or is it all an obscure hypothesis?

“involves a subject conducting a certain task, in this case recalling a series of numbers, while listening to different kinds of background music. If sound exhibits acoustical variations, or what Perham calls an "acute changing-state," performance is impaired. Steady-state sounds with little acoustical variation don't impair performance nearly as much.”(Cutler).

The human mind is constantly processing and picking up information. Music is an ordered and predictable sequence of sounds. When the brain hears music, it tries to decode it. In decoding those symbols and patterns, it sets up “neural highways, or synapses” , to receive and examine data. These pathways then can be used for remembering other symbol-oriented information, such as language and math. Like a muscle, the brain becomes stronger the more it is worked, and these workouts are achieved by listening to classical music. Mozart’s music is exceptionally difficult to decode, therefore the brain must work harder, thus making one smarter.

In a study done by Jennifer L. Lilley, Crystal D. Oberle, and Jon G. Thompson, Jr. at Texas State University, they tested the effects of grade consequences and music on test anxiety and performance. The objective of this experiment was to evaluate the effects of the participants grades if there were consequences and how music effects the participates anxiety and their test performances. There were previous works cited on how people improve their spatial cognitive task performances after listening to Mozart (Ho, Mason, & Spence, 2007). They also included studies where there were no benefits to people’s spatial cognitive task performances after listening to Mozart (Hui, 2006).

The effects of Mozart on today’s society can be seen just about everywhere. In marketing, they play music to make the consumer want to buy their product. In restaurants, they play music to help the customer feel relaxed in their establishment. People listen to music while driving cars. It seems that music permeates almost every aspect of our everyday lives. When people think of the birth of modern music, they often think of classical music. And when people think of classical music, they think of Mozart. During the 18th century, the musical genius Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart composed a total number of six hundred and fifty works. When he was younger, he toured Europe with his father, Leopold, and his sister, Nannerl, playing for Europe’s elite of the time. He put forth some major musical contributions that shape modern music today (Fiero 324,326). Classical music is the great grandfather of all modern music. Some people enjoy

It can be proven, through literary research and personal experiences, that music has a positive effect on learning and memory. It can be concluded that these positive effects have an impact on patients with Alzheimer’s, on the motor skills and auditory memory of mentally disabled children, on students attempting to remember subject manner that they are learning, and on the affectivity of advertisements. On a personal note, music has facilitated my ability to remember things, both positive and negative, a number of times. For example, in high school I memorized the days of the week in French by singing them along with a tune that was already familiar to me. I have also had multiple experiences in which I remember things that I do not want

In order to understand, one must understand the history of the myth. The term “Mozart Effect” is commonly used to discuss the general correlation between Mozart and increased intelligence. However, this term is applicable to many different tests and relationships. For example, the Mozart Effect can be used to describe the relationship between listening to Mozart while in the womb and increased intelligence. While this is a common myth, it is not the myth discussed in this paper. I will be addressing the “Mozart Effect” based on Dr. Gordon Shaw’s theory of the Mozart Effect, which states “listening to classical music makes you smarter.” After conducting a study in which college students took an IQ test before and after listening to Mozart’s famed “Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major,” Shaw claimed that the student’s IQ increased by “as much as 9 points.” This conclusion sparked many tests, ranging from

Peynircioglu of American University showed that among visual learners, music while studying increased the subjects ability to retain information better than it did in auditory learners or musicians. When tested to see whether meaningful melodies would be remembered better than non meaningful melodies, Musicians had a harder time remembering melodies that were determined to be meaningless than visual learners/nonmusicians but had a higher rate of

However when the two group’s SAT test scores were compared it was found that there was no significant difference between effects on the cognitive abilities of adolescents. This suggests that listening to Mozart only produces short-term increased cognitive abilities. Both these sources refute Don Campbell’s claim that listening to Mozart can have a powerful impact on the creative and intellectual development in children (Taylor & Rowe, 2012). Any cognitive enhancement that occurs is normally minimal and is not lasting as it does not show any change in IQ or reasoning ability (Helder, 2014). Helder states that a basic principle showing that learning has occurred is proven by its repeatability. As the ‘Mozart effect’ was considered only to have a short term effect on cognitive abilities of students then it is unlikely that students could repeat what they had been taught any better than without the music as the effect only lasted 10-15 minutes (Helder, 2014). Pietschnig, Voracek and Formann (2010) state that exposure to music stimulates the section of the cortex that is responsible for spatial awareness. However this stimulation does not result in long-term change in the intellectual and creative development of humans so therefore this refutes Don Campbells claims (Pietschnig, Voracek & Formann, 2010). Sources arguing that listening to Mozart produces only short-term effects on

(2001) explained that the “Mozart effect” is due to arousal and mood improvement. The arousal-mood hypothesis proposes that listening to music, affects people’s level of arousal and mood, which in turn influence performance on different cognitive tasks (Husain, Thompson, & Schellenberg, 2002).

Concurrently we expect to find that listening to music that they would not normally listen to will have an even stronger negative impact on our participants recall ability compared to the control, or silent condition. We believe that given the complexities of how the human mind processes music, that trying to add in the equally complex task of reading or memorizing the human mind will simply be overloaded with information. We believe this overload will cause them to perform worse than they would if they were trying to complete those tasks without the distraction of music. These effects have been demonstrated in younger students in the study by Anderson and Fuller (Anderson 2010) we expect to find that these effects are the same in college

The mind is greatly impacted by music by showing healthful changes (www.bellaonline.com/articles/). Doctors now use music for their patients’ treatments in order to help them stay healthy (www.bellaonline.com/articles/). Heart patients acquired the same benefits from listening to classical music for thirty minutes as they did from anti-anxiety medication (www.bellaonline.com/articles/). Musical therapy has been used to help people with heart problems, which worked quite effectively. (www.bellaonline.com/articles/). People who have had migraines frequently, were trained to use music and relaxing procedures to reduce their headaches. Studies have also shown that music helps students with their intelligence levels (www.bellaonline.com/articles/). A majority of students had higher test scores than others because they listened to Mozart before their exam. People who listened to classical music for an hour and a half while revising manuscripts increased their accuracy by 21% (www.bellaonline.com/articles) (Mish 725.).

The “Mozart effect” is a statement based on research studies claiming that listening to the

Research and conducting experiments is the most effective way possible to gain an answer. The type of research is based on the situation, the hypothesis, and the resources the individual or group has on hand. The purpose of this research paper is to examine the Mozart Effect from two different journals and answer questions based on the research materials. The first article for examination is Music and spatial task performance.

The goal of this lab is to evaluate the effect of different music on test subjects taking math and literature tests, and see which music is the most distracting and the most helpful for subjects. . The objectives of this lab are to observe the effect that the pop, country, rock, and classical music have on the test subjects, and to measure the amount of problem marked wrong against the amount of problems not completed during the task.