[Under the motto "I hate to say I told you so"...]

   Science, vol.285, 6 August 1999

   Requiem for the Mozart effect?

   A popular theory that listening to Mozart will improve your reasoning
   skills has taken a hit.  After trying to replicate the original
   research on which the theory was based, researchers have concluded
   that the music has no effect on the way students answer typical IQ
   test questions.

   Ever since researchers reported in 1993 that college students did
   better on spatial reasoning tests immediately after listening to
   Mozart's Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major, the so-called "Mozart
   effect" has enjoyed a spectacular career as pop science.  Governor
   Zell Miller of Georgia promoted buying classical music for every
   infant in the state, and record stores touted CDs that were
   "scientifically proven" to boost brainpower.

   But other scientists, using various protocols, had trouble finding
   a significant effect.  And some argued any effect might be explained
   by a positive mood induced by Mozart.  To sort these issues out,
   psychologist Kenneth Steele of Appalachian State University in Boone,
   North Carolina, went back to the original protocol used by psychologist
   Frances Rauscher of the University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh, and her
   colleagues.  Steele gave the spatial reasoning tests to 125 college
   students.  Two days later, he retested them, priming some students
   with the Mozart piece, while others got silence and a third group
   heard music by Philip Glass.  The improvement was essentially the
   same for all three groups, Steele reports in the July issue of
   Psychological Science.  "I was very surprised when I did not get
   the effect at all", he says.

   Bur Lois Hetland, a cognitive psychologist at Harvard University,
   believes the jury is still out.  She says it remained to be explained
   why 26 of 27 studies, including Steele's own, have found some benefit
   to listening to Mozart-although in many cases the difference was not
   statistically different [Lies, damned lies and statistics, eh? -RS].
   The researchers agree, though, that the public reaction has been
   overblown.  "It's premature at best for policy decisions to be made
   on the Mozart effect," says Rauscher.

Ruben Stam