The Mozart Effect. Is it fact or fiction? This question has made quite a splash in the science community in the past decade. The Mozart Effect states that listening to classical music as a kid is good for the brain development and learning abilities of that kid. In this paper I will show you why I believe it does do so. In 1988 Gordon Shaw and Xiaoden Leng began experimenting with how music affects the brain. They discovered that the way the brain nerves were connected it encouraged cell groups to adopt certain rhythmic patterns. Instead of printing the output conventionally they decided to put the output into sounds. They realized that the patterns sounded familiar and contained the sound of baroque, Eastern and New Age music (Anderson, 2000).
Why does this matter? The fact that the output came out to sound like that type of music indicates that there is a very real possibility of a relationship between them. The relationship that could occur is that when you present that child with the music previously mentioned, it could actually strengthen those bonds. By doing this, in turn, you could stimulate the child’s learning curve therefore speeding up the development of the mind. This is an assumption that would definitely need some solid evidence to back it up. “Does the educated listener “hear more” in a composition than a naive listener? Certainly. (Weinberger 2000).” This in turn can be used as a measure of attentiveness in class. If someone is trained to hear more in a composition, they would be more adaptive to learning a technique for hearing, not just listening, more in a class room environment. The more a person hears in a class could also then in turn lead to them learning more from that particular class. This shows that the improvement of one’s listening could also lead to the improvement of learning ability. This will lead to one being more capable of grasping knowledge than they would without this improved hearing ability. Even
References: Anderson, D. T. (2000, Spring). The Mozart Effect: A Closer Look. Retrieved August 25, 2010, from The Mozart Effect: A Closer Look: http://lrs.ed Weinberger, N. M. (2000, Winter). “The Mozart Effect”: A Small Part of the Big Picture. Retrieved September 9, 2010, from “The Mozart Effect”: A Small Part of the Big Picture: http://www.musica.uci.edu/mrn/V7I1W00.html Kenealy, P. (1997). Mood-state-dependent retrieval: The effects of induced moon on memory reconsidered. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 50A, 290-317. Shin, G. (2003). The "Mozart Effect"- Real or just a hoax? Retrieved August 25, 2010, from The "Mozart Effect"- Real or just a hoax?: http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/neuro/neuro03/web1/gshin.html#7 Rauscher, F., Shaw, G., & Ky, K. (1993). Music and spatial task performance. Scientific Correspondence , 611.