MOZART EFFECT

Mozart Effect

Mozart Effect

Introduction

The mysterious power of music over its listener has long sparked the curiosity of scholars across different disciplines. In 1993, psychologist Frances Rauscher published a study showing a potential enhancement of spatial-temporal task performance brought on by simply listening to Mozart's Sonata for two pianos in D major (K. 448) for 10 minutes before performing the task. This phenomenon has since been coined the "Mozart Effect" and has gained considerable notoriety in the public consciousness. Rauscher's research was quickly over-generalized by aspiring entrepreneurs spurring an entire industry of products including "Mozart for Babies", promising enhanced intelligence by simply listening to Mozart at an early age.

Effects of Mozart

Within psychology however, there is still considerable controversy regarding the underlying nature of this effect and continuing discussion on whether it in fact exists. Although Rauscher et al. concluded that improvements in spatial-temporal performance were the result of neuro-priming caused by the complex structure of Mozart's music (1993), efforts by others to replicate these results have yielded mixed results leading to other potential explanations. Three main alternative explanations arose. The first was coined the valence model. It explains performance enhancement following exposure to music as a function of preference to the musical stimuli. Advocates of that view claim that performance improvements do not occur only when listening to music, but they can be achieved by any stimulus the individual finds appealing. The second alternative explanation uses mood changes to explain performance enhancement after listening to music. In this, the mood model, changes resulting from music exposure occur as a result of mood enhancement caused by listening to the music. The final explanation is that the improved performance is mediated by increases in arousal. In this explanation the music simply acts as an arousing stimulus, and performance enhancement occurs as a result of the well established link between arousal and performance.

Arousal hypothesis

The arousal hypothesis has been supported repeatedly by empirical evidence and researches examining the impact of changes to the musical elements in Mozart's Sonata have begun to unravel the details of the relationship between mood, arousal, music and performance. Specifically, it appears that the tempo of the musical composition influences arousal, and that this increased arousal may cause improvements in performance after exposure to the Mozart sonata.

Potential explanations for the Mozart Effect

All the potential explanations for the Mozart Effect are outlined in the next few sections. First, the neuro-priming model will be examined more closely, followed by the three alternative explanations; the valence model, the mood model and the arousal model. The potential influence of individual differences on this effect will then be examined followed by an exploration of the potential benefits of recording physiological measures during a study of this nature. The methods and planned data analysis of the proposed experiments are then described in detail.

The Neuro-Priming Model

The neuro-priming model explains performance enhancement after listening to music with the Trion Model of cortical firing patterns. According to the Trion Model, the basic cortical neural network, called the ...