Overreliance On Anecdotes

This article reveals how Don Campbell, the author of “The Mozart Effect,” believes that listening to music can

We must consider what else could cause babies to be more intelligent than the rest of babies in the same age group. Alternate reasons may be causing babies to be smarter, which leads to the scientific principle: ruling out rival hypotheses. This hypothesis that believes Mozart’s music can make an individual keener, having said that, is it only classical music that is affecting a child’s brain? A child can simply become smarter as his/her parents read books to them even if they’re less than a year old. Children can become clever by the selected television shows they watch, of course by having parents choose a well-disciplined program. Music can boost a child’s emotions, but other factors such as a meaningful conversation or playing games and activities that stimulate a child’s brain are much more plausible. Children who read are also developing some ideas and visions in their heads that come from the stories and fantasies in books, which help them speak better and expands

If something as common as music has a significant effect on development, research can be extremely important for people trying to make informed decisions for their children. Referencing the title, I know The Incredibles made a remark insinuating that playing Mozart for a baby can make them smarter. Though the research on the Mozart Effect and IQ has shown no significant discovery, the inspiration behind this is brilliant. Music has to have some sort of effect on the brain, further than slight stimulation. There must be a reason that many kids toys, tv shows, books etc. use a lot of music; especially educational media. I know it can be very influential, but the effect it has on a child mentally and developmentally I feel can be further

Music has also been scientifically proven to lower stress and depression and improve one’s health.1 It is also scientifically proven that children who engage in music become more intelligent since music improves one’s memory and learning abilities. There are also

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

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

In modern society intelligence is highly competitive and subject to scrutiny; therefore, it is understandable that a child’s intelligence is a primary concern for many parents. The Mozart effect, popularised in the 1990s, resulted in many parents believing that simply exposing their child to music composed by Mozart would improve their intelligence (Campbell, 1997). The claim was founded by research published in the journal Nature, which suggested that spatial reasoning could be temporarily enhanced by listening to one of Mozart’s compositions for ten minutes (Rauscher, Shaw & Ky, 1993). It will be argued that there is not sufficient evidence to support the claim that playing Mozart to babies will increase their intelligence. Firstly, the

Aheadi, Dixon, and Glover were able to identify the benefits of musical training in a study involving the Mozart effect. Aheadi et al. state that, “Evidence suggests musical training can lead to long term enhancement of intelligence” (Aheadi, Dixon, and Glover, 2009, pg. 1). The results in this study showed that musicians had a higher overall performance compared to non-musicians. In a 1998, study completed by Overy, they were able to show that musical training tends to lead to increased intellectual abilities. They extrapolated that musical training improves cognitive functioning in attention, coordination, language, and concentration (Overy,

It is clear that even in the early stages of life, the body entrains itself to the music of the surrounding environment, whether it be the sounds of voices, machines, instruments, or silence. While this research is still in its preliminary stages, it shows that the simple act of listening to music in the early stages of life could have a drastic impact on the patient’s future quality of life (Drahota, et al., 2012).

The study called “All You Need is Love” is a source that I would not use. I choose not to use this study because while it does provide good information on how music was effective in society it was very confusing and hard to follow. When reading it I found my attention span failing me. While, yes, this seems to be a reasonable study, it is hard to follow, thus

Is the "Mozart effect" a fact or a myth? How can one type of music affect the intelligence of a human being?

From prior research, most experimenters chose to use the Mozart Effect. In this experiment, the genres of music chosen did not include classical music of any type. It has been thought that listening to classical music, particularly Mozart, enhances performance on cognitive tests. However, recent findings show that listening to any music that is personally enjoyable has positive effects on cognition (EMedExpert, 1). For the beginning of this experiment, instead of swabbing places for bacteria, the bacteria used was

In our experiment, we studied if sugar make kids hyperactive? We did the planning and execution together. Our prediction was that sugar would increase their blood pressure and would weaken their concentration and memory. Our experiment showed us that the myth and we were wrong. If we had had more time, if we had given them more sugar and if the subjects were younger the experiment results would be much more accurate. Even though our subjects were not young kids and we had a limited amount of time and therefore a limited number of subjects I can say that we busted the myth successfully.

For this discussion I chose an article from the Correlation and Causation website titled “Music intensifies ecstasy effects”. In this article, the author highlights that music intensifies the effects of the drug Ecstasy. For his argument he uses a research conducted by Iannone and colleagues made with rats. He emphasizes that the study showed that even rats that received a higher dose of ecstasy could return to a normal state after one day of its administration. Additionally, he indicated that even rats receiving low doses of ecstasy did not showed brain activity modification when no music was played. Conversely, he adds that total electrical brain activity on rats was significantly decreased in the presence of loud music, similar to what is heard in discotheques, (Barnes, 2006). In this article, Barnes subjectively misrepresented Iannone study results. Moreover, Barnes established causation on his article; this is inappropriate because correlation does not imply absolute cause, (Rosnow & Rosenthal, 2013).

In this article, one of the more noticable warning signs of Pseudoscience is the overreliance on anecdotes. One of the trends of pseudoscience is the dependence on evidence