I recently wrote a post about whether or not listening to music while you study is beneficial to your memory/learning, and I discovered that the best work is done in silence, and it is okay to have a little bit of background noise, but keeping that to a minimum is also very beneficial. Many of the comments that I received on that post mentioned the Mozart Effect, so I decided to look into that.
A quick google search will tell you that the Mozart Effect is “A set of research results indicate that listening to Mozart’s music may induce a short-term improvement on the performance of certain kinds of mental tasks known as ‘spacial temporal reasoning’.”
In researching this, I found an article that BBC published in January of 2013 that it might not even be what we call “a thing”. It revealed that the original study was done, not on children, but on young adult psychology students. Also, only 36 people were involved in the study. This shows that people really do trust what they hear if it comes from a seemingly reliable source. As researchers looked more into the Mozart effect over the years, they found that it may not be the Mozart music itself that helped those people, but rather enjoyment of the music that you hear while encoding items into your memory. Though, the research I found for my earlier post clearly showed that listening to music you enjoy while studying has the same, negative effect that listening to music you do not like or feel indifferently about.
So, I am still sticking to my previous post—take out those headphones!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozart_effect
http://artandseek.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/mozart2.jpg
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20130107-can-mozart-boost-brainpower
http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2014/5/30/1401448584225/Headphones-and-hearing-009.jpg
I agree with some of the comments above in that each person is different in whether listening to music helps them or not. A study done at Stanford University showed that music wakes up the areas of the brain that deal with paying attention. Different types of music will work differently with the brain, so this is also a large factor. Personally, I love to listen to music while I work/study as I think it helps me to keep going, and stay focused. (https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2007/07/music-moves-brain-to-pay-attention-stanford-study-finds.html)
Each person is different, as is the way people learn. I know that I personally can only listen to music without lyrics while studying, but my friends have no issue listening to music. Mozart is an interesting theory though, and it may do some good to try the study out on yourself. Classical music has something soothing about it, and perhaps that could help some people focus. Listening to Mozart may make some people smarter, but there is no real evidence proving it can do that for everyone like you said. Maybe next you could look into if playing an instrument makes you smarter, that could relate very well. http://www.babycenter.com/0_the-mozart-effect-classical-music-and-your-babys-brain_9308.bc
This is an interesting post! Personally, I can’t do work while music is playing. People talking or really any background noise doesn’t phase me but music really does. In the study performed about the Mozart Effect, there could be many potential other reasons for why they came to the conclusion that they did. First of all, the sample size wasn’t big enough at all and also it could totally be a third variable which is effecting this conclusion.
This is an interesting blog! However, I would have to disagree with the hypothesis proposed. I think that it varies from person to person whether or not music has an effect on them while they study. For example, there are some people who can’t get anything done if there is any background sound and need complete silence, while there are other types of learners who cannot stay focused in dead silence. I think that this theory would need further experimenting and more studies conducted in order to determine whether silence while studying is a blanket effect or if it varies from person to person.
I couldn’t agree more! I get too distracted while listening to music, i could never study and focus on music at the same time! Though the mozart theory has been proven to be effective, I wonder if they asked people who enjoy classical music, or who play classical music. Personally, I understand the connection how the instrumentation can help one remember what they are studying, but Mozart wouldn’t help me. Listening to a contemporary pop song would help me in that situation. I think the study should include if the people listen to Mozart often. Nice blog!