THE MOZART (SCHMOZART) EFFECT

By Chloe Palumbo Helen Wei

The “smart-baby” product industry has grown tremendously over the past few decades, gaining profound momentum grounded in the belief that classical music helps boost intelligence in infants–a phenomenon more commonly known as the Mozart effect. Whether in the form of CDs, interactive toys, or television programs, the societal obsession with distilling the wondrous powers of Mozart to augment intelligence in infants has captivated society for decades. But how accurate is the so-called Mozart effect and is there a scientific basis for this phenomenon?

The term Mozart effect stems from a study conducted in 1993 by Rauscher and colleagues in which 36 college students listened to either 10 minutes of Mozart’s piano sonata, 10 minutes of silence, or 10 minutes of a monotonous voice prior to taking a spatial reasoning task–a test which measures one’s ability to conceive and alter three-dimensional relationships of objects in space over time. After the exam, the subjects’ spatiotemporal task scores were recorded across experimental groups and compared. Rauscher and colleagues found that participants who listened to Mozart’s piano sonata performed significantly better on the spatial reasoning relative to those who listened to a non-musical stimulus or silence, however, such improvements persisted for only 10-15 minutes after listening. From this, Rauscher et al. concluded that there was some short-term correlation between spatiotemporal task score and listening to Mozart’s piano sonata.

Shortly after the Rauscher et al. findings were published, the press eagerly jumped at the opportunity to spread the word to the public. However, amidst the public frenzy, loads of generalizations ensued and Rauscher et al.’s findings became progressively more distorted as the American public became entranced by the notion that listening to Mozart makes you smarter. The modest study conducted on young adults that measured spatiotemporal task score was suddenly transformed into the generalization that children who listened to classical music from a younger age could achieve higher SAT scores and IQs. The public’s fervent conviction that listening to Mozart helps boost

intelligence during child development gave rise to the “smart-baby” industry of today that promotes products which promise to augment a child’s intelligence through classical music.

After the empirical findings by Rauscher et al. were published, numerous studies attempted to replicate the results. However, still to this day, no studies have succeeded in replicating the magnitude of the effects found by Rauscher and colleagues. In fact, one of the largest and most comprehensive studies conducted by Pietschnig et al. found only a small increase in spatial task performance score for subjects who listened to Mozart’s piano sonata relative to subjects exposed to a non-musical stimulus or no musical stimulus at all. However, Pietschnig et al. found that the same magnitude of difference in spatial task performance score was observed when subjects were presented with some other musical stimulus, thereby producing a negligible difference between the two musical conditions. Additionally, Pietschnig et al. found evidence of publication bias in the Rauscher et al. study, thus emphasizing that there is little substantial evidence that listening to Mozart’s piano sonata boosts spatiotemporal task performance.

Although listening to Mozart may not make you smarter, these follow-up results provide some interesting insight into the relationship between listening to music and brain stimulation. Even in Pietschnig et al. study, subjects scored higher on spatial reasoning tasks after listening to some musical stimulus. Scientists speculate that any music the brain deems to be engaging is sufficient to stimulate the brain. In fact, one study conducted by Burdette et al. used fMRI to scan 21 subjects as they listened to a variety of music genres that they liked and disliked. Burdette et al. found that brain connectivity was most heavily influenced by the listener’s preferences rather than the specific type of music. Specifically, they found elevated brain connectivity in brain circuits concerned with focused internal thought, empathy, self-awareness, as well as memory and social emotion consolidation when subjects listened to their preferred music. While the precise neural mechanisms that underlie the process of listening to music are still yet to be elucidated, scientists are aware that listening to music is a highly active neural process that has a plethora of benefits on the brain. Whether it is a tool to increase an infant's intelligence, music is no doubt a highly effective form of brain stimulation with massive potential particularly in the clinical environment.

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