Mozart effect

" We have this common internal neural language that we're born with and so if you can exploit that with the right stimuli then you're going to help the brain develop to do the things like reason." -- Dr. Gordon Shaw

The Mozart effect is a term coined by Alfred A. Tomatis for the alleged increase in brain development that occurs in children under age 3 when they listen to the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

The idea for the Mozart effect originated in 1993 at the University of California, Irvine, with physicist Gordon Shaw and Frances Rauscher, a former concert cellist and an expert on cognitive development. They studied the effects on a few dozen college students of listening to the first 10 minutes of the Mozart Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major (K.448). They found a temporary enhancement of spatial-temporal reasoning, as measured by the Stanford-Binet IQ test. There were many attempts to replicate their results but most were unsuccessful (Willingham 2006). One researcher commented that the " very best thing that could be said of their [Shaw's and Rauscher's] experiment—were it completely uncontested—would be that listening to bad Mozart enhances short–term IQ" (Linton). Rauscher has moved on to study the effects of Mozart on rats. Both Shaw and Rauscher have speculated that exposure to Mozart enhances spatial-reasoning and memory in humans.

In 1997, Rauscher and Shaw announced that they had scientific proof that piano and singing instruction are superior to computer instruction in enhancing children's abstract reasoning skills.

The experiment included three groups of preschoolers: one group received private piano/keyboard lessons and singing lessons; a second group received private computer lessons; and a third group received no training. Those children who received piano/keyboard training performed 34% higher on tests measuring spatial- temporal ability than the others. These findings indicate that music uniquely enhances higher brain functions required for mathematics, chess, science and engineering (Neurological Research, February 1997).

The Mozart effect is an example of how science and the media mix in our world. A suggestion in a few paragraphs in a scientific journal becomes a universal truth in a matter of months, eventually believed even by the scientists who initially recognized how their work had been distorted and exaggerated by the media. Others, smelling the money, jump on the bandwagon and play to the crowd, adding their own myths, questionable claims, and distortions to the mix. In this case, many uncritical supporters line up to defend the faith because at stake here is the future of our children. We then have books, tapes, CDs, institutes, government programs, etc.