Experimental Researches On Mozart Effect

The Mozart effect was reported by Rauscher, Shaw and Ky in 1993. It means that college students' score on spatial reasoning task increased after listening to ten minutes of the first movement (allegro con spirito) of Mozart's Piano Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major, K448. Mozart effect have received widespread attention in researchers, the public, and the news media. Foreign researchers do many empirical studies on the validity of Mozart effect and the mechanism of this effect. Domestic researchers summarized and reviewed foreign studies.The results of foreign studies intended to replicate the enhancement of spatial reasoning following exposure to 10 min. of Mozart's Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major have been varied. While some studies have replicated the effect, others have not. Because many researchers examined various factors, so that the design they used varied. These make the difficulties in explain the Mozart effect. Rauscher et al. consider that some theoretical and experimental factors may contribute to the various findings, such as the selection of dependent measures, the presentation order of the conditions, and the choice of musical compositions. They proposed some suggestions in the future study. (1)Choose the suitable task. They suggest two components of spatial reasoning task......spatial imagery and the temporal ordering of spatial components. Such kind of task should be used to investigate the ability to transform mental images in the absence of a physical model. (2) The difficulty of the task is important to Mozart effect, and using more difficult items will facilitated to find Mozart effect. (3)The music pieces similar to Mozart's music and with complex construction probably produce Mozart effect, while the repeated music (for example, minimal music) could not produce effect. (4) Studies using pretest and post-test design should control for practice effects. (5) Instructions to participants are important because it can make participants concentrate on the music. It seems unlikely that a Mozart effect would be found for participants who did not actively process the music.Researchers also have different views on the mechanism of the Mozart effect. Some researchers think that listening to the music will directly prime spatial abilities because of similar neural activation between spatial reasoning and passive listening to Mozart. In other words, the Mozart effect represents an instance of priming. Some other researchers think that listening to music may affect subject's mood, arousal or preference, which will then influence performance on various cognitive skills.Besides these controversies, there are many problems should be explored, such as, what kind of music can produce Mozart effect? Are Female more subject to the Mozart effect than males? Do subject's music experiences have any influence on Mozart effect?People's opinions on the implication of Mozart effect on education are not the same. One of the views is that the research on Mozart effect enlightened people to consider the way and the method of promoting the development of brain functions, and such research make people realized the possible importance of music on exploiting the potential ability of brain. However, the adverse view is that people have the false impression of Mozart effect and wont to promote children's intelligence through music. This will do more harm than good and will draw attention and resources away from programs, policies, and ideas that have already been proven to be effective. They suggest that educators should be cautious about setting unrealistic expectations regarding the cognitive benefits of music instruction.The present study used paper folding and cutting task that derived from the similar items publishing in the literatures to examined many controversial issues in the researches on the Mozart effect, and discussed its' practical meaning.Experiment 1 aimed to produce spatial reasoning task. Rauscher et al. believed that paper folding and cutting task (PFC) is suitable for measure the ability of spatialreasoning because such task contained two components of spatial reasoning task------spatial imagery and the temporal ordering of spatial components. Because lacking of the original PFC, we derived two sets of PFC from the published literature. Experiment 2 investigated the existence of Mozart effect. The results of studies intended to replicate the enhancement of spatial reasoning following exposure to ten min. of Mozart's Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major (K.448) or other composer's works are inconsistent. Some studies have replicated the effect and some studies have been unable to confirm the existence of the effect. The result of experiment 2 indicate that the participants' spatial score after listening Mozart's music is significantly higher than the spatial score after sit in silence for ten minutes. We replicated the Mozart effect.The choice of musical composition may influence cognitive performance. Rauscher et al. suggest that complexly structured music, regardless of style or period, may enhance spatial task performance. But according to the previous studies, the characteristics of the musical compositions which can produce the enhanced effect are not clear. In experiment 3, we using different composer's music and the music works with different styles to examine which kind of music can produce Mozart effect. The music work we choose include three sorts: (1) the music was clearly affective as the Mozart selection used by others; (2) the music composition is similar to Mozart's K448 and some researchers predicted that it will be effective; (3) a piece of Chinese music composition which have many characteristics similar to the Mozart's K448 and also have many differences in style. Through the present study, we suggest that the music pieces which will be affective to spatial reasoning include such following characteristics: (1) have complex structure; (2) the melodic line repeatedly and with more biggish undulation; (3) have more variations of dynamics and the lively change between piano and forte; (4) have various rhythm form; (5) the sound texture was rich and varied. Except for these characteristics, there are many musical factors should be examined, for example, the influence of mode. The influence of the familiarity with music composition also should be considered. Though most respondents in this study are notfamiliar with the Chinese music composition------Piano Concerto "Shan Lin", butbecause of its' rich Chinese musical style, respondents' implicit knowledge of Chinese music will facilitate the processing of this music composition.Experiment 4, experiment 5 and experiment 6 using within-subject design to examined the mechanism of Mozart effect. There are two hypotheses about the mechanism of Mozart effect. We examined one of the two hypotheses that listening music change respondents' arousal level, mood or preference and thus promote cognitive ability.Experiment 4 investigated the influence of preference. Nantais et al. suggest that Mozart effect is actually a consequence of participants' preference for one testing condition over another. This preference will influence the performance of subsequent spatial task. The assumption being that better performance would follow the preferred condition. This study selected two music compositions as the stimuli, the first movement of Mozart's Sonata (K.448) and Chinese orchestral piece "A Moonlit Spring Night by the River of Flowers". The findings of this experiment are as following: (1) Participants' spatial reasoning score after listening to Mozart's Sonata K.488 were significantly higher than their spatial reasoning score after listening to "A Moonlit Spring Night by the River of Flowers". (2) The influence of preference on Mozart effect is not significant. (3) The difference of spatial reasoning score between musicians and nonmusicians is not significant, but the years of studying music and the spatial score have a reliable correlation.The purpose of experiment 5 was to examine the influence of mood on Mozart effect. Many researches proved that variations in mood can affect cognitive performance. We used two music compositions (the first movement of violin concerto "Four Seasons" composed by Vivaldi, Barber's Adagio for strings) to induced twodifferent moods------happy and sadness, and then investigated whether there have anydifferences in spatial reasoning score between happy mood and sad mood. These two music pieces once used by other researchers and be proved can induce happy mood and sad mood respectively. The findings indicate that the difference of subject's spatial reasoning score in two kind of musical stimuli is not significant. By analyzing subjects' mood measure, we found that the mood induced by music is too complicated, and this related to participants' knowledge structure, and characteristic of personality, etc. Because we aimed to compare the spatial scores in simple mood, so we delete the participants who induced complex mood by music. Compared the score of spatial task in happy mood and sad mood, the result suggest that the influence of mood on Mozart effect is not significant.Experiment 6 examined the influence of physiological arousal on Mozart effect. The treatment conditions include listening Mozart' Sonata (K.448) and listening a relaxation instructions. Some researchers think that the mechanism of Mozart effect must be arousal. The conditions may have affected subjects' arousal differently, with the sonata increasing arousal and the relaxation instructions decreasing arousal, which could have affected spatial reasoning performance. Though the foreign researchers proposed that arousal may be a factor that could influence Mozart effect, but they often let the participants using self-report inventory to evaluate their arousal level subjectively. There are few researches using apparatus to measure participants' arousal level directly. While domestic research in this way have not been found. This study used biofeedback apparatus to record participants' physiological data in the course of experiment, such as EEG, EMG, SC, TEMP, BVP, HR, etc. The result shows that the difference of spatial reasoning scores in two treatment conditions is not significant. Through the analysis of physiological data, we find the significant difference in listening Mozart and listening relaxation instruction. While this difference in two test phases (test after listening Mozart and test after listening relaxation instruction) disappeared. This means the influence of arousal level on Mozart effect is not obvious.Through these series researches, we suggest the existence of Mozart effect. Because our studies have focused on investigating the effect of passive listening to music with the paper folding and cutting task, we cannot clarify the breadth of the music effect. Thus the effect of music on other cognitive areas especially the music's influence on children's cognitive development should make clear. The results of experiment 4, experiment 5 and experiment 6 support Rauscher et al.'s priming explanation indirectly. Certainly, this view should be proved in further studies in neurophysiology and neuropsychology, especially using barin-function-graphy techniques such as PET and fMRI to authenticate it.