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Transcript of THE MOZART EFFECT - people.uncw.edupeople.uncw.edu/noeln/documents/2018MozartPresentation.pdf ·...
THE MOZART EFFECT
Alexandria Brown, Madeline Morgante, Anna
Hampton, and Elizabeth Warren
Introduction■ The Mozart Effect refers to the inclination that spatial-temporal abilities improve
after listening to music by Mozart (Rausher, Shaw, & Ky, 1993, 1995)
■ Reports in other journals have indicated that there is great consideration to how listening to music/music lessons improve other abilities as well
■ If associations are confirmed, then there could be great implications in other aspects of life (for example, enhanced performance for pilots and engineers)
■ Facilitation in spacial-temporal performance following music exposure is short-term and temporary (10-15 min), but there are longer-term effects for music lessons
■ Previous studies have not distinguished between the two
■ The purpose of this study was to complete a more comprehensive explanation for the short-term phenomena
■ Rauscher et al. have proposed that the Mozart Effect can be explained by the "trionmodel" (Leng and Shaw, 1991)
– This says that exposure to complex music compositions excites cortical firing similar to those used for spatial-temporal reasoning, and therefore, spacial-temporal tasks are improved due to exposure to this music
Introduction Cont...
■ The Mozart Effect is similar to transfer or priming
– Example: the effect could be consideredan instance of positive, nonspecific transfer across domains and modalities
■ It is difficult to situate in a context of known cognitive phenomena
■ Stough, Kerkin, Bates and Mangan (1994) failed to replicate the findings by Rauscher et al.
■ Rauscher and Shaw (1998) came to the conclusion that the effect is obtainable only with spacial-temporal tasks
Goals of Experiment
■ Goal in Experiment 1 was to replicate and extend the basic findings of Raushcer et al. (1993, 1995)
■ Goal in Experiment 2 was to test the hypothesis that the Mozart effect is actually a consequence of participants' preference for one testing condition over another
– Assumption that better performance would follow the preferred condition
Methods
■ Participants: 84 undergraduates from two universities in Canada; 56
participated in experiment one and 28 participated in experiment 2
■ Stimulus presentation and response recording was controlled by a
custom program that was installed on the computer
■ During testing listeners received a stereo signal through headphones
inside a booth
Methods
■ Participants initiated a 10 minute listening session using a mouse then completed their responses to the following PF&C task which contained a mixture of 17 questions from the Stanford-Binet Intelligence test and some questions the researchers created for the study.
■ Participants were presented with one of the 17 questions for a 1 minute period and then had to choose an answer from the 5 possible choices
■ Each session took approximately 25 minutes to complete
■ Each individual participated in one testing condition and one control condition on separate days within a two week span
https://www.indiabix.com/non-verbal-reasoning/paper-cutting/
Methods: Experiment 1
■ The first 10 minutes of Mozart’s Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major K and the
first 10 minutes of Schubert’s Fantasia for Piano, Four Hands, in F Minor.
Both pieces were from the same compact disc and played by the same two
pianists, then rerecorded onto a Macintosh computer.
■ 28 participants were assigned to Mozart and the other 28 were assigned to
Schubert
■ control condition was sitting in silence for 10 minutes
Methods: Experiment 2
■ The treatment condition was the first 10 minutes of Mozart’s Sonata
for Two Pianos in D Major K
■ The control condition was listening to 10 minutes of "The Last Rung on
the Ladder" by Stephen King
■ After the second testing session, participants were asked
which testing condition they preferred
Results■ Experiment 1
- Mixed design ANOVA
• Participants listening to music (i.e. Mozart and Schubert) showed significantly higher scores on the spatial-temporal task than when sitting in silence.
• Testing order showed improvement of scores from the first session to the second session.
• This experiment successfully demonstrated Rauscher's original study while in a laboratory.
• Whether the participant listened to Mozart or Schubert, it made little difference for scores.
Results■ Experiment 2
- ANOVA
• There was no significant main effect for condition while also showing no interaction between condition and test order.
• Testing order showed improvement of scores from first session to second session
• Tasks were performed better when participants who listened to their preferred condition. Preference does interact with condition.
• Those who listened to Mozart and preferred Mozart did significantly better than any of the other conditions.
Results
Results
Discussion■ The purpose of this study was to examine how
exposure to music effected performance on the
given spatial-temporal task.
■ As mentioned previously, the researchers in
Experiment 1 found that participant's performance
on the spatial-temporal task was better when they
listened to either Mozart or Schubert than in the
control condition.
▪ This caused the researchers to conclude that
the "Mozart Effect" does not necessarily have
anything to do with Mozart.
▪ Further, it is implicated in this experiment that a
similar effect could be found when any positive
stimulus is paired with a less engaging
stimulus.
Discussion (cont.)
■ This last claim was examined in Experiment 2 when researchers
substituted silence as a control for listening to a short story.
▪ Participants in this study performed better when they
listened to their preferred stimulus.
▪ These results suggest two possibilities:
■ The first is that the passive listening of the
pleasant/preferred stimulus aided in the individual's
performance on the spatial-temporal task.
■ Secondly, the 10 minute consequence of listening to
the unpleasant/boring stimulus may have inhibited
their performance.
Future Research▪ Although this study gave researchers a solid foundation, there is still a great deal of room
left for further research on the Mozart Effect.
▪ Past studies have shown that music can significantly effect an individual's mood/arousal.
▪ It has been shown that "happy" music induces feelings of happiness while "sad"
music induces feelings of sadness (Parrott & Sabini, 1990)
▪ How might these factors have affected our study?
▪ In Experiment 1, the researchers had participants listen to pleasing music (Mozart or Schubert) in the experimental condition; and in the control, participants sat in silence for
10 minutes.
▪ It is possible that each condition caused the individual's mood/arousal levels to change which also affected their performance on the spatial-temporal task.
▪ Future research could test this possibility by measuring the participant's mood/arousal throughout the study using various tools (e.g. surveys, heart rate monitors, EEG's, etc.) to see if a correlation exists between mood/arousal and performance on the spatial-temporal task.
Conclusion■ In conclusion, the researchers found no evidence to suggest that listening to Mozart
increases performance on spatial-temporal tasks more than listening to other pleasant/engaging auditory stimuli.
Resource
Nantais, Kristin M. & Schellenberg, E. Glenn. (1999). The mozart effect: an artifact of
preference. Psychological Science, 10(4), 370-373.