Should new born babies be listening to Mozart in their cots?
Back in 1998, a US state governor thought so.
Governor Zell Miller called for public funds to be made available
so that every baby in Georgia could be sent a Mozart CD.
Around the world, many parents were a step ahead.
They were playing their babies a soundtrack of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik,
The Magic Flute and the rest. What was going on?
In three words – 'the Mozart effect' - a phrase first coined in 1991,
but popularised two years later, when the findings of a now famous
academic study captured the public's imagination worldwide.
Simply put, the claim was that listening to Mozart's music,
absorbing its beauty and complexity, somehow improved your brainpower.
And it was never too early to start – hence playing Mozart to babies.
Or indeed, buffalos. Yes, buffalos.
A tale of Mozart effect mania was recounted to me by the psychologist
and author of Mind Myths, Sergio Della Sala.
He met a mozzarella cheese producer in Italy who swore
that playing Mozart three times a day to his buffalo herd
led to better quality milk. So how had things come to this?
A look back at that original paper shows that its authors,
from the University of California Irvine, were decidedly modest in
their claims – and they didn’t use the phrase 'Mozart effect' at all.
Another surprise, is that their study wasn’t done on
children but on young adult students. And only 36 took part.
The experiment involved the students completing a series of mental tasks.
But before they started they either: Sat in silence for ten minutes...
or listened to ten minutes of Mozart's Sonata for two pianos.
And the results? On the really rather specific skill
of predicting how folded up pieces of paper would look when unfolded,
the students who listened to the Mozart did do a little better.
That's all. And the effect only lasted for around fifteen minutes.
So how come this study led people to believe that listening to Mozart
could have a lasting impact on intelligence and cognitive abilities?
In part, because this conclusion is intuitively attractive.
Academics have theorised that the brilliant patterns in Mozart's music
could stimulate similar patterns of cortical firing in the brain,
which in turn would help with complex tasks, like solving spatial puzzles.
Anyway, the studies kept on coming.
A meta-analysis of sixteen of them, which took place in 2010, confirmed
that there was some small positive effect, though again short-lived.
But was it unique to the music of Mozart? In short, no.
Another major meta-analysis, again finding temporary positive effects,
found that other music worked just as well. This was backed up by a
study of eight thousand children conducted in the UK in 2006.
Listening to ten minutes of Mozart's String Quintet in D major
did improve the children's ability to predict paper shapes,
but so did listening to a medley of PJ and Duncan's 'Stepping Stones',
Mark Morrison's 'Return of the Mack' and Blur's 'Country House'.
The Mozart effect had morphed into the Blur effect or indeed the
whatever-music-you-like effect. Or for that matter,
as another study showed, whatever-passage-from-a-book-you-like
effect. In this research, listening to a reading from a Stephen
King novel worked as well as a listening to a piece of Schubert.
By now it was any form of pleasurable cognitive arousal that was
making a difference. Music could do it, but so could drinking coffee or dancing.
So much then for the Mozart effect. But hold on, there is one way
Mozart could make a difference to you or your child's brain power.
What you need to do is to learn to play his compositions.
For instance, a study, done by Jessica Grahn, a Canadian cognitive scientist,
showed that a year of piano lessons, combined with regular practice,
could increase IQ by as much as three points.
So, music does increase intelligence, but unfortunately it takes
quite a bit more effort than simply listening to Mozart.