Is there anything to listening to Mozart’s music and health? Does listening to Mozart’s music have an effect on a person’s IQ? There does seem to be some proof that it does. Time magazine wrote an article about the Power of Mozart that is very interesting reading.
Frances Rauscher, Gordon Shaw and Katherine Ky gave preschool and college students standard tests of spatial reasoning (being able to turn an object in one’s head or to imagine how pieces of a shape fit together). The tests were given after the students had experienced three different conditions for ten minutes: one condition was silence, one was listening to a relaxation tape, another was listening to Mozart’s Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major. Performance on the post-Mozart spatial tests were significantly better.
But, of course, not all scientific experiments are reliable. Every experiment must be proven over and over before it can be accepted as fact. So in 1994, researchers at the University of Auckland examined the effects of listening to Mozart contrasted with other types of music or silence. Seventy-nine college students were divided into three groups. One group listened to Mozart (the same piece used in the ’93 study). Another listened to silence. The third group listened to a piece by Philip Glass—a composer of music based on endless repetitions of patterns. The two latter groups showed no significant increase in spatial IQ. But the Mozart group did! (True Education article)
For more reading about the benefits of listening to Mozart music check out this web site. Why Mozart?
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