Do rats show a Mozart effect?
- ASU Author/Contributor (non-ASU co-authors, if there are any, appear on document)
- Kenneth M. Steele Ph.D., Professor (Creator)
- Institution
- Appalachian State University (ASU )
- Web Site: https://library.appstate.edu/
Abstract: The “Mozart effect” is an increase in spatial reasoning scores after listening
to a Mozart piano sonata. Both the production and interpretation
of the effect are controversial. Many studies have failed to replicate the
original effect. Other studies have explained a Mozart effect as being
caused by changes in arousal or differences in preferences of the listener.
F. H. Rauscher, K. D. Robinson, and J. J. Jens (1998) reported that rats
learned to complete a T-maze more quickly if they had been exposed in
utero and reared hearing a Mozart piano sonata. They concluded that
the result indicated a direct effect of the music on brain development and
contradicted competing accounts of arousal or preference. This article is
an analysis of the experiment by Rauscher et al. The in utero exposure
would have been ineffective because rats are born deaf. A comparison of
human and rat audiograms, in the context of the frequencies produced
by a piano, suggests that adult rats are deaf to most notes in the sonata.
The successful performance of the Mozart group may be explained by
the incomplete use of random assignment of subjects to groups and by
experimenter effects in the construction of groups. The results of Rauscher
et al. (1998) do not provide strong support for the existence of the Mozart
effect.
Do rats show a Mozart effect?
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Created on 4/19/2013
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Additional Information
- Publication
- Steele, K. M. (2003). Do rats show a Mozart effect? Music Perception, 21(2): 251-265. Published by the University of California Press (ISSN: 0730-7829).
- Language: English
- Date: 2003