The Mozart Effect: Music Listening is Not Music Instruction

“The Mozart effect” originally referred to the phenomenon of a brief enhancement of spatial-temporal abilities in college students after listening to a Mozart piano sonata (K. 448). Over time, this term was conflated with an independent series of studies on the effects of music instruction. This occurrence has caused confusion that has been perpetuated in scholarly articles, such as the one by Waterhouse (2006) and that persists in the minds of the general public. Here this article emphasizes the distinction that must be made between research on music listening and research on the more cognitively complex and educationally significant phenomena of music instruction. This article stresses that improvements in spatial-temporal skills associated with music instruction are not “free.” This article also discusses theories of transfer and mechanisms of learning as they relate to this topic.