Listening to Mozart 1 Running head: THE MOZART EFFECT Listening to Mozart Does Not Enhance Backwards Digit Span Performance

Rauscher, Shaw, and Ky recently reported that exposure to brief periods of music by Mozart produced a temporary performance increase in tasks taken from the StanfordBinet IQ measure. The present study examined whether this effect occurred on performance in a backwards digit span task. Thirty-six undergraduates were exposed to 10-min periods of Mozart music, a recording of rain, or silence in a within-subjects design. After each stimulus period, undergraduates had three attempts to hear and recall different 9-digit strings in reverse order. No significant differences among treatment conditions were found. There was a significant effect of practice. Results are discussed in terms of the need to isolate the conditions responsible for production of the Mozart effect. Listening to Mozart 3 Listening To Mozart Does Not Enhance Backwards Digit Span Performance Rauscher, Shaw, and Ky (1993) reported that 36 undergraduates increased their mean spatial reasoning scores the equivalent of 8 or 9 IQ points on portions of the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale: Fourth Edition (Thorndike, Hagen, & Satler, 1986) after listening to 10 min of Mozart’s Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major, K448 (hereafter labeled the “Mozart effect”). The Mozart effect was temporary, having disappeared within 10 to 15 minutes. Rauscher, Shaw, Levine, Ky, and Wright (1994) reported further that short periods of music education in school produced both a temporary effect, immediately after music training, and a permanent increase, over a school year, on performance by preschool children on the Object Assembly portion of the Weschler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence-Revised (Weschler, 1989). The hypothesis that musical experiences of short duration can have powerful effects on IQ scores on both a short-term and long-term basis is important for both practical and theoretical reasons. However, attempts to replicate the original report by Rauscher et al. (1993) have been unsuccessful. Kenealy and Monsef (1994) were unable to produce a Mozart effect on performance using portions of the Stanford-Binet test, the paper folding and cutting task and the matrices task. Studies by Newman, Rosenbach, Burns, Latimer, Matocha, and Vogt (1995) and Stough, Kerkin, Bates, and Mangan (1994) were unable to obtain a Mozart effect when items from the Raven’s Progressive Matrices (Raven, 1986) served as the dependent measure. Carstens, Huskins, and Hounshell (1995) were unable to produce a Mozart effect when the dependent measure was the Revised Minnesota Paper Form Board Test, Form AA (Likert & Quisha, 1948). Listening to Mozart 4 Rauscher, Shaw, and Ky (1995) have reported a replication of the Mozart effect, using elaborations of the Stanford-Binet paper folding and cutting task as the dependent measure. Further they specified that an appropriate task was one that involved not just spatial recognition but that it should incorporate spatial and temporal transformations. This observation was the basis for the dependent measure used here, a backwards digit span task. A backwards digit span task requires that a person listen to a string of digits and then reproduce them in reverse sequence. Theoretically, the backwards digit task is of interest as a spatial reasoning task because it requires rotation or transformation of the sequence (Carroll, 1993; Das, Kirby, & Jarman, 1979). Empirically, performance with this task correlates strongly with memory for designs (Schofield & Ashman, 1986), performance with Raven’s Progressive Matrices (Banken, 1985), and is a good predictor of performance with the rod-and-frame task (Haller, 1981). Right-hemisphere dysfunction reduces backwards digit span performance while left-hemisphere dysfunction reduces forward digit span performance (Rapport, Webster, & Dutra, 1994; Rudel & Denckla, 1974), although this difference does not occur in all types of disorders (Gupta, Mahto, Tandon, & Singh, 1986). The purpose of the experiment reported here was to examine whether a Mozart effect would be produced following the procedure of Rauscher et al. (1993) with backwards digit span performance as the dependent measure. Listening to Mozart 5 Method Participants Thirty-six White upper division university students (28 women and 8 men) from two sections of a psychology course volunteered to participate. Students received course credit for participation. Apparatus Two stimulus tapes of approximately 10 min duration were created. One contained the Mozart Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major (K448) and the other contained the sound of a gentle rainstorm (“Spring Showers”) from an environmental sounds recording. Sequences of digits were recorded on separate tapes for the digit span task. Tapes were played on a good quality portable system. Procedure The experiment took place in a room reserved for that purpose. The participant was told that the experiment was concerned with the effect of relaxation on recall and instructed to sit in a large, comfortable, recliner chair. The chair faced away from the experimenter, and the experimenter operated the tape player which had been placed on a table by the left arm of the recliner chair. Each participant listened in turn to the Mozart tape, the rainstorm tape, or sat quietly following the verbal instruction “to relax.” The order of stimulus conditions was counterbalanced across participants using a Latin square design. Following exposure to a stimulus condition, each participant listened to three nine-digit sequences. Digits were presented on the tape at the rate of one every 2 s. After each nine digit sequence, the participant attempted to repeat that sequence in reverse order. The score recorded was the Listening to Mozart 6 sum of number correct across the three sequences, the maximum score being 27. Each participant heard nine sequences of digits across the experimental session, three per stimulus condition. Digit sequences were created by a random number generator and no sequence was repeated in a session to a participant. Three different units of digit sequences were created and assigned in a balanced fashion across participants. The number of digits correctly recalled in reverse order was recorded for each subject for each condition. A correct recall was defined as the correct digit in the correct serial location. For example, if the original sequence was 7-5-3-1-9 and the recalled sequence was 9-1-3-4-7 then the score would be 4 correct. The Rauscher et al. prediction is that the number of digits correctly reversed in recall should be enhanced in the Mozart condition relative to both the silence and the rainstorm condition. Results Table 1 shows three descriptive measures of mean recall on the backwards digit span task. The headings under “Stimulus Condition” show mean performance as a function of the type of stimulus which immediately preceded the recall task. There was practically no difference overall in mean recall as a function of the preceding stimulus condition, F(2, 70) = .03, p = .97. The outcomes of specific inferential contrasts were consistent with this observation, Music versus Rain, t(35) = 0.03, p = .98 and Music versus Silence, t(35) = 0.21, p = .83. The lack of differences in performance among stimulus conditions was not due to unsystematic variability. For example, a clear practice effect overall was observed, F(2, 70) = 21.92, p < .001. Although serial position was completely counterbalanced in stimulus presentation, we calculated performance as a function of serial position. The Listening to Mozart 7 headings under “Order of Task” in Table 1 report mean recall as a function of the serial position of the stimulus condition. The results indicate that mean recall was improved by additional experience in the task. This observation is confirmed by inferential tests, First versus Second, t(35) = 4.24, p < .001, and Second versus Third, t(35) = 2.41, p = .02. All three stimulus conditions were administered in a single session as was done by Rauscher et al. (1993). Although the effect of music is supposed to be short-lived, it is possible that there was some carryover effect of music onto the other stimulus conditions or the reverse. Therefore we compared performances after the first stimulus condition only, when there would be no such effects. The headings under “First Stimulus” in Table 1 indicate recall following a stimulus condition when that stimulus condition was the first of the session. Overall there was not a significant difference among treatments, F(2, 22) = 1.26, p = .30. The mean recall after music is little different from that after silence, t(11) = 0.38, p = .71. Although mean recall after the rainstorm condition was lower than after music, the difference was not statistically significant, t(11) = 1.26, p = .23. Discussion Exposure to a recording of the Mozart Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major (K448) did not produce a subsequent enhancement in performance on a backwards digit span task, a task chosen because it required a temporally extended quasispatial solution like the paper folding and cutting task. The lack of effect here is inconsistent with the findings of Rauscher et al. (1993, 1994, 1995), but is consistent with reports from other laboratories (Carstens, Huskins, & Hounshell, 1995; Kenealy & Monsef, 1994; Newman et al., 1995; Stough et al., 1994). This difference is made more puzzling by the observation that Rauscher has reported large effects in her studies while both Newman et al. (1995) and Listening to Mozart 8 Stough et al. (1994) conclude confidently that there was no Mozart effect in their experiments. One explanation for the failure of this and other experiments to obtain a Mozart effect could be due to the use of different dependent measures. But different measures cannot be the entire explanation because Kenealy and Monsef (1994) did not obtain a Mozart effect even though they used a paper folding and cutting task as did Rauscher et al. Kenealy and Monsef (1994) used silence as their control condition. Rideout and Laubach (1996) reported recently a positive effect with a paper folding and cutting task but they compared exposure to Mozart against exposure to a progressive relaxation tape only. The lack of a silence-only control condition means that one cannot determine whether listening to Mozart improved performance or listening to the progressive relaxation tape reduced performance. Rauscher et al. (1993) reported a Mozart effect relative to both silence and a relaxation tape control condition. There seems to be some important methodological difference between Rauscher et al.’s work and that of other experimenters that has not yet been elucidated. The nature of this difference constitutes a puzzle since the experimental design seems straightforward. Rauscher et al. (1994) emphasized the potential beneficial effects of increases in time and money allocated to music education in the grade school curriculum. These practical considerations add to the importance of the solution of this scientific puzzle. Listening to Mozart 9 ReferencesBanken, J. A. (1985). Clinical utility of considering digits forward and digits backwardsas separate components of the Wechsler adult intelligence scale-revised. Journalof Clinical Psychology, 41, 686-691.Carroll, J. B. (1993). Human cognitive abilities: A survey of factor-analytic studies. NewYork: Cambridge University Press.Carstens, C. B., Huskins, E., & Hounshell, G. W. (1995). Listening to Mozart may notenhance performance on the revised Minnesota paper form board test.Psychological Reports, 77, 111-114.Das, J. P., Kirby, J. R., & Jarman, R. F. (1979). 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J., & Ashman, A. F. (1986). The relationship between digit span andcognitive processing across ability groups. Intelligence, 10, 59-73.Stough, C., Kerkin, B., Bates, T., & Mangan, G. (1994). Music and spatial IQ.Personality and Individual Differences, 17, 695. Listening to Mozart 11 Thorndike, R. L., Hagen, E. P., & Sattler, J. M. (1986). The Stanford-Binet intelligencescale (4th ed.). Chicago: The Riverside Publishing Co.Weschler, D. (1989). Weschler preschool and primary scale of intelligence-revised. NewYork: The Psychological Corporation. Listening to Mozart 12 Author NoteAddress correspondence to Kenneth M. Steele, Department of Psychology,Appalachian State University, Boone, NC 28608 or by e-mail, [email protected]. Listening to Mozart 13 Table 1Mean Backwards Digit Span Scores