Mozart effect

The Mozart effect can refer to:

• A disputed set of research results that indicate that listening to certain kinds of complex music may induce a short-lived (fifteen minute) improvement on the performance of certain kinds of mental tasks known as "spatial-temporal reasoning;"
• Popularized versions of the theory, which suggest that "listening to Mozart makes you smarter," or that early childhood exposure to classical music has a beneficial effect on mental development;
• A trademark of Don Campbell, Inc. for a set of commercial recordings and related materials, which are claimed to induce the effect.

Don Campbell's 1997 book, trademark, and subsequent promotion

The "Mozart effect" is best known to the general public through the work of Don Campbell. His 1997 book, "The Mozart Effect: Tapping the Power of Music to Heal the Body, Strengthen the Mind, and Unlock the Creative Spirit," popularized the theory that listening to Mozart (especially the piano concerti) will temporarily increase your IQ and produce many other beneficial effects on mental function. Campbell and others went on to recommend playing specially selected classical music to infants, in the expectation that it will benefit their mental development. These theories are controversial.

After publishing his book, Campbell went on to trademark the phrase "Mozart effect," write followup books, and create related products. Among these are collections of music that are claimed, not merely to produce a "Mozart effect," but to focus it for particular purposes such as "Deep rest and rejuvenation," "intelligence and learning," and "creativity and imagination."

Michael Linton, professor of Music Theory and Composition at Middle Tennessee State University, remarked:

Campbell has even gone cable with infomercials for his book and its accompanying compact discs and cassettes. In the great tradition of P. T. Barnum and the "Veg-O-Matic", Mozart has now hit the mainstream of American life.

History

The phrase "Mozart effect" first appeared in a 1993 paper by Frances H. Rauscher, a psychologist at the University of Wisconsin, and Gordon Shaw, a physicist at the University of California at Irvine, in a series of papers. The first paper, published in 1993 reported that brief exposure to a Mozart piano sonata produces a temporary increase in spatial reasoning scores, amounting to the equivalent of 8–9 IQ points on the Stanford–Binet IQ scale.

The fact that IQ was mentioned at all, and the fact that the music used in the study was by Mozart, the epitome of high-art music in the educated European tradition, had an obvious appeal to those who value this music, and the "Mozart effect" was widely reported.

New York Times music columnist Alex Ross wrote in 1994, in a light-hearted article, "researchers [Rauscher and Shaw] have determined that listening to Mozart actually makes you smarter," and presented this as the final piece of evidence that Mozart has dethroned Beethoven as "the world's greatest composer."

A 1997 Boston Globe article mentioned some of the Rauscher and Shaw results. It described one study in which three- and four-year-olds who were given six months of private piano lessons scored 34 percent higher on tests of spatio-temporal reasoning than control groups given computer lessons, singing lessons, and no training.

The popular impact of the theory was demonstrated on January 13, 1998, when Zell Miller, governor of Georgia, announced that his proposed state budget would include $105,000 a year to provide every child born in Georgia with a tape or CD of classical music. Miller stated "No one questions that listening to music at a very early age affects the spatial-temporal reasoning that underlies math and engineering and even chess."

Miller played legislators some of Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" on a tape recorder and asked "Now, don't you feel smarter already?" Miller asked Yoel Levi, music director of the Atlanta Symphony, to compile a collection of classical pieces that should be included. State representative Homer M. DeLoach said "I asked about the possibility of including some Charlie Daniels or something like that, but they said they thought the classical music has a greater positive impact. Having never studied those impacts too much, I guess I'll just have to take their word for that."

The existence of the "Mozart effect" was challenged by two teams of researchers in 1999: Christopher F. Chabris, and Kenneth M. Steele et al. in a pair of papers published together under the title "Prelude or Requiem for the 'Mozart Effect'?"

Chabris stated that his meta-analysis demonstrated "that any cognitive enhancement is small and does not reflect any change in IQ or reasoning ability in general, but instead derives entirely from performance on one specific type of cognitive task and has a simple neuropsychological explanation," called "enjoyment arousal." For example, he cites a study that found that "listening either to Mozart or to a passage from a Stephen King story enhanced subjects’ performance in paper folding and cutting [one of the tests frequently employed by Rauscher and Shaw] but only for those who enjoyed what they heard."

Steele et al. found that "listening to listening to Mozart produced a 3-point increase relative to silence in one experiment and a 4-point decrease in the other experiment."

Limitations of the effect

The size, nature, and very existence of the "Mozart effect" are disputed. But assuming that measurable effect of complex music on cognitive function actually can be demonstrated, two limitations or misconceptions should be noted.

First, popular presentations of the "Mozart effect" almost always tie it to "intelligence;" thus, as noted above, Alex Ross's comment that "listening to Mozart actually makes you smarter," and Zell Miller's asking the Georgia legislature whether they "felt smarter" after he played them some Beethoven.

Second, it is frequently suggested or stated that exposure to the right kind of music in childhood has a lasting, beneficial effect. Circa 1999 the state of Florida created a regulation requiring toddlers in state-run schools to listen to classical music every day.

Rauscher herself commented on the first misconception in her rebuttal to the Chabris and Steele et al. papers, in which she said (emphasis supplied):

Our results on the effects of listening to Mozart’s Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major K. 448 on spatial–temporal task performance have generated much interest but several misconceptions, many of which are reflected in attempts to replicate the research. The comments by Chabris and Steele et al. echo the most common of these: that listening to Mozart enhances intelligence. We made no such claim. The effect is limited to spatial–temporal tasks involving mental imagery and temporal ordering.

The second limitation is that those researchers who did report finding an effect also found it to be fleeting; in the case of the original study, it was said to have lasted only fifteen minutes. As for programs like those suggested by Zell Miller, Rauscher commented in 1999: "I don't think it can hurt. I'm all for exposing children to wonderful cultural experiences. But I do think the money could be better spent on music education programs."

References

• Campbell, Don 1997 The Mozart Effect: Tapping the Power of Music to Heal the Body, Strengthen the Mind, and Unlock the Creative Spirit ISBN 0380974185
• "Georgia's Governor Seeks Musical Start for Babies," Kevin Sack, The New York Times, January 15, 1998 p. A12
• "Mozart For Baby? Some Say, Maybe Not", Erica Goode, The New York Timies, August 3, 1999 p. f1: Rauscher, "the money could be better spent on music education programs."
• Kenneth M. Steele Lists many papers by Steele casting doubt on the Mozart effect, with downloadable reprints in PDF form, including the 1999 Nature paper "Prelude or requiem for the 'Mozart effect'?"

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