The Mozart Effect - Annotated Bibliography Example

? Annotated Bibliography Table of Contents I. Annotated Bibliography 3 II. Critical Evaluation of the Bibliography 13 I. Annotated Bibliography Applasamy, A. 2012. Bang Goes the Theory: The Mozart’s Effect. YouTube. [Online]. Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLqC0NPUBao [Accessed 26 November 2013] The video is an excerpt of a TV program that probed the Mozart effect and discussed the implications of challenges to the validity of the 1993 study with regard to the Mozart music in itself boosting the cognitive skills of subjects in a battery of tests. The video also employed the talents of a researcher and annotator who did live recreations of versions of the tests, where subjects chosen at random in a public place were subjected to Mozart music and to music from Blur and then made to undergo the battery of cognitive tests that included solving puzzles, testing reaction times to falling rulers, and tests of memory, among others The findings in the public tests were in congruence with the findings in other studies that state that there is nothing in Mozart music that is special, even though Mozart music did indeed boost subject performance in cognitive tests. This is the conclusion because music by Blur also had the same effect. The baseline was silence. In both cases where subjects were first subjected to silence and then to either Mozart or Blur music, there were observed improvements in the performance of the subjects to the tests. The final caveat is that the performance boosts occurred after listening to the music, and that the performance boosts were short-lived. The video in all is a good general overview of the nature of the Mozart effect tests and the kinds of challenges that have been made to it over the years (Applasamy, 2012). Bangerter, A. and Heath, C. 2004. The Mozart Effect: Tracking the evolution of a scientific legend. British Journal of Social Psychology (2004). [Online]. Available at: https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/documents/BJSP,%20Mozart%20Effect.pdf [Accessed 26 November 2013] Demorest, S. and Morrison, S. 2000. Does Music Make You Smarter? Music Educators Journal 87 (2). Green, C.S and Bavelier, D. 2008. Exercising Your Brain: A Review of Human Brain Plasticity and Training-Induced Learning. Psychology and Aging 23 (4). [Online]. Available at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2896818/ [Accessed 26 November 2013] Husain, G., Thompson, W. and Schellenberg, E. 2002. Effects of Musical Tempo and Mode on Arousal, Mood and Spatial Abilities. Music Perception 20 (2). [Online]. Available at: http://www.psych.utoronto.ca/users/ghusain/Publications_files/GH2002Mozart%20effect.pdf [Accessed 26 November 2013] Jausovec, N., Jausovec, K. and Gerlic, I. 2006. The influence of Mozart’s music on brain activity in the process of learning. Clinical Neuropsychology 117. Jenkins, J.S. 2001. The Mozart Effect. Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 94 (4). [Online]. Available at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1281386/ [Accessed 26 November 2013] Lubetzky, R. 2010. Effect of Music by Mozart on Energy Expenditure in Growing Preterm Infants. Pediatrics 125 (1). [Online]. Available at: http://www.pediatricsdigest.mobi/content/125/1/e24.full [Accessed 26 November 2013] Makielo, L. 2012. The Mozart Effect. The Epoch Times. [Online]. Available at: http://epoch-archive.com/a1/en/sg/nnn/2012/01%20January_2012/Issue%20395_17_January_2012/395_B4.pdf [Accessed 26 November 2013] Nantais, K. 1997. Spatial-temporal skills and exposure to music: Is there an effect, and if so, why? University of Windsor, Scholarship at Windsor: Electronic Theses and Dissertations. [Online]. Available at: http://scholar.uwindsor.ca/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4551&context=etd&sei-redir=1&referer=http%3A%2F%2Fscholar.google.com%2Fscholar%3Fq%3Dkristin%2Bm.%2Bnantais%2Buniversity%2Bof%2Bwindsor%26btnG%3D%26hl%3Del%26as_sdt%3D0%252C5#search=%22kristin%20m.%20nantais%20university%20windsor%22 [Accessed 26 November 2013] Nantais, K. and Schellenberg, E. 1999. The Mozart Effect: An Artifact of Preference. Psychological Science 10 (4). The article’s title summarizes the nature of the Mozart effect, which is in essence the marked improvement in the spatial-temporal skills of those who listen to a piece by Mozart as has been documented in other studies. Here the study findings are that listening to music by Mozart and/or by Schubert , in a study replicating the study done by Rauscher, Shaw and Ky in 1993, did improve those abilities. On the other hand, in extension of the original study, the present study also looked at the impact on the same abilities of a story narration in place of the music. The results are that the latter also produced the same improvements in spatial-temporal skills as when listening to Mozart or to Schubert. The findings are that it does not really matter whether the subject was listening to music or to the narration of a story. What mattered in the main was what the subject preferred to listen to. When subjects are made to listen to what they preferred to hear, either music or the story narration, then the spatial-temporal skills improved as has been shown in other studies. The key differentiation is preference, hence the title. The boost in spatial-temporal skills is a function of preference rather than on the kind of music or sound that is piped through the subject for his or her hearing (Nantais and Schellenberg 1999). It is worth noting that the study looked at the original “Mozart effect” study design and found that there are various ways to interpret the presence of the effect as being the result of listening to the Mozart piece itself, with the identity of the music being crucial, or the result of the music phase being a more preferred state in comparison to the silence that was the control. In other studies too that tried to re-examine the original study, the proponents of this current study note that the alternatives to Mozart presented to the study subjects were either silence, music played in repetition, or tapes that induced relaxation. The hypothesis is that those alternative types of music presented to Mozart music were boredom-inducing, and therefore were less preferred in comparison to Mozart’s music, which was more preferred. The hypothesis is that preference rather than the kind of music played and the kind of control sound that was played had the determining role in how the music or sound induced better performance in spatial-temporal tasks. Indeed, in the current study, what the proponents did was to simplify the controls, by first identifying whether subjects improved when listening to either Schubert or Mozart versus silence, and then identifying whether subjects improved on the intellectual abilities measured when listening to a story read to them versus silence. Here the key thing was to test the hypothesis that it was the preference of the subjects for either the music or the short story that determined whether they did better in the spatial-temporal exercises or not. That the short story reading also induced better performance compared to silence, same as the first experimental set where music induced better performance than silence, meant that it was the preference for either music or to the reading of the short story, rather than the Mozart music in and of itself, that was instrumental in people doing better at certain intellectual/thinking tasks (Nantais and Schellenberg 1999). From the point of view of the study design, it seems that the proponents wanted to undertake a critique of the soundness of the study design of the original Mozart study, for the seeming lack of rigor that became evident when the proponents found the Mozart effect in operation when subjects listened to sounds that they preferred. The original study was not rigorous enough to think of the possibility that the silence that they used in tandem with the Mozart music may have contributed to the emergence of a bias or preference for the Mozart music, which was pleasant as opposed to silence which the subjects may have unconsciously become bored to. In the original study, one can argue that Mozart music can be replaced by boredom and the relative preference for something to replace that boredom indeed, with the same variables and the same study methods, without invalidating the results of the study. In other words, the lack of rigor in the crafting of the study meant that generalization that led to the coining and widespread media coverage of the Mozart effect was hasty and not founded on good science (Nantais and Schellenberg 1999). Rauscher, F. and Hinton, S. 2006. The Mozart Effect: Music Listening is Not Music Instruction. Educational Psychologist 41 (4) [Online]. Available at: http://alliance.la.asu.edu/temporary/students/katie/MultipleIntelligenceMozart.pdf [Accessed 26 November 2013] Reilly, R. 2013. Forget coffee for concentration: A burst of Mozart can ‘significantly help focus the mind’. Mail Online. [Online]. Available at: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2352553/Forget-coffee-concentration-A-burst-Mozart-significantly-help-focus-mind.html [Accessed 26 November 2013] Spigel, A. 2010. ‘Mozart Effect’ Was Just What We Wanted to Hear. NPR. [Online]. Available at: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128104580 [Accessed 26 November 2013] The article summarizes the findings against the existence of the Mozart effect in one study and traces the evolution of the media interest that blew the initial study findings out of proportion, as well as the contrary studies that disputed the presence of the Mozart effect. It is noteworthy that this article came out in 2010, 17 years after the landmark study by Rauscher et al., and by this time the consensus had turned out to be against the presence of the Mozart effect and of the initial study being plagued by many problems from the design to the validity of its assumptions to the general applicability and soundness of its research findings. 17 years on, for example, even Rauscher has come to admit that it is not the Mozart music itself, but the level of enjoyment that people find in it or in any other kind of music or sound stimulus, that determines whether people get a boost in their intellectual abilities or not. The same universal conclusion has been reached by countless other studies that have been done to disprove and to critique the initial Rauscher study, and the article does point out that there are reasons for the initial interest and wide explosion of the notion that Mozart improved intelligence among the American media and public. Chief among them is that the media wanted something sensational and aimed at a quick fix to the problems facing America, and the Mozart effect seemed to be just that quick fix to problems that Americans had relating to the future of their children. In other words, while the proponents of the original study did admit that the study had certain limitations, for example that the sample size was too small, that did not prevent the media and the American public from believing blown-up claims about the efficacy of Mozart’s music in improving the intelligence of their children (Spigel 2010). Steele, K., Ball, T. and Runk, R. 1997. Listening to Mozart Does Not Enhance Backwards Digit Span Performance. Perceptual and Motor Skills 84. [Online]. Available at: http://www1.appstate.edu/~kms/documents/Listen.pdf [Accessed 26 November 2013] Steele, K. et al. 1999. Prelude or requiem for the ‘Mozart Effect’? Nature 400:827. [Online]. Available at: http://libres.uncg.edu/ir/asu/f/Steele_KM_1999_Prelude_or_Requiem.pdf [Accessed 26 November 2013] Steele, K., Brown, J. and Stoecker, J. 1999. Failure to Confirm the Rauscher and Shaw Description of Recovery of the Mozart Effect Perceptual and Motor Skills 88 (3). [Online]. Available at: http://libres.uncg.edu/ir/asu/f/Steele_KM_1999_Failure_to_Confirm.pdf [Accessed 26 November 2013] Thompson, W., Schellenberg, E. and Husain, G. 2001. Arousal, Mood, and the Mozart Effect. Psychological Science 12 (3). [Online]. Available at: http://www.erin.utoronto.ca/~w3psygs/Thompson2001.pdf [Accessed 26 November 2013] University of Vienna. 2010. Mozart’s Music Does Not Make You Smarter, Study Finds. Science Daily. [Online]. Available at: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/05/100510075415.htm [Accessed 26 November 2013] This article is noteworthy for reporting on the results of an exhaustive meta-analysis of the results of more than 40 studies on the presence or absence of the Mozart effect, involving a total of 3,000 subjects, over a span of 15 years from the time of the publication of the initial Mozart effect study of Rauscher et al. in 1993 to 2010. The findings from this meta-analysis by a group of researchers from the University of Vienna are that there is no such Mozart effect that has been found. In other words, the studies over this span of time have not been able to establish a correlation between listening to Mozart’s music in the main and improvements in cognitive, spatial-temporal skills as has been claimed by Rauscher et al. and has been widely disseminated by media and believed in by the general public. Where the article stands out is in its definitive debunking of the Mozart effect in its totality, based on the strength of the evidence of 40 studies done by independent proponents, and involving the thousands of subjects from which they gathered evidence and tried to clone the study methods of Rauscher et al. This body of evidence stands in opposition to the findings of one study in 1993, with a few subjects, and the rigor of which has been subjected to much criticism in various other studies and critiques of the soundness of the science employed in it. This article can stand as having the weight of 40 other studies behind it, and is worthy of inclusion in any research undertaking on the Mozart effect (University of Vienna 2010). Waterhouse, L. 2006. Inadequate Evidence for Multiple Intelligences, Mozart Effect, and Emotional Intelligence Theories. Educational Psychologist 41 (4). [Online]. Available at: http://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/wp-content/uploads/Inadequate-evidence-for-Multiple-Intelligences-Mozart-Effect-and-Emotional-Intelligence-Theories1.pdf [26 November 2013] Waterhouse, L. 2007. Multiple Intelligences, the Mozart Effect, and Emotional Intelligence: A Critical Review. Educational Psychologist 41 (4). [Online]. Available at: http://graduatestudenthelp.com/LynnWaterhouse.pdf [26 November 2013] Wilson, T. and Brown, T. 1997. Reexamination of the Effect of Mozart’s Music on Spatial-Task Performance. The Journal of Psychology 131 (4). [Online]. Available at: http://www.personal.psu.edu/faculty/a/c/acp103/PSYCH105/Mozart%20Effect%20Article.pdf [26 November 2013] The study is noteworthy for basically concluding with a critique on the generalizability of study findings relating to the effect of Mozart’s music on the spatial-thinking abilities of college students to which the music was administered in controlled studies. In general, the study was not able to replicate the findings of the original Mozart study from Rauscher et al. in 1993. The study itself is significant because it did not have the benefit of hindsight and the corroboration findings of other studies that came later. In other words it did not have the power of tens of other studies debunking the existence of the Mozart effect to back it up and to validate its findings. In this sense the study findings are significant, being close to the original study and just relying on the strength of its study design and its methods to make a conclusion against the existence of the Mozart effect. In this sense too the study limitations as discussed, with regard to the use of the pencil and maze test, adds to the sense of rigor and accuracy that the study proponents aimed for. One can imagine that at the time, a finding against the existence of the Mozart effect and the generalizability of the results of the 1993 findings was unpopular, given the wide acceptance and great media coverage of the paper and the belief that Mozart music did improve intelligence. The use of relaxation music too, together with silence, was an extension of the original study and introduced at that time new pathways to validating or rejecting the existence of the Mozart effect. This was research that others could have built on in the years to come, and added to the body of evidence against the findings of the 1993 study (Wilson and Brown 1997). II. Critical Evaluation of the Bibliography The bibliography is representative and contains a substantial number of academic studies that taken together represent the evolution of academic thinking relating to the Mozart effect in general and to the 1993 study by Rauscher et al. that gave rise to the term and the media and public frenzy that came in its wake. Fast forward to 2013, and it is clear that the original findings of that research had been debunked, and in particular the direct correlation between Mozart’s music, taken on its own, and improvements in the cognitive skills of people who listen to them. Here of specific interest are the spatial-temporal skills and how those skills are enhanced or not enhanced by listening to Mozart. The quality of the articles and the academic papers is very high, and the academic papers used in this annotated bibliography are from highly reputable journals and institutions that moreover reference each other and stand on the findings of previous peer-reviewed studies. The rigor is evident from hindsight too, from the way the first findings from the time of the publication of the 1993 Rauscher paper stood on the merits of their own study designs to debunk the findings of that 1993 paper. Those early studies did not benefit from the body of evidence that would be compiled later on, to amount to a tsunami of evidence debunking the existence of the Mozart effect altogether. Taken together, moreover, the annotated bibliography also shows balance in that it takes in representative studies that seem to confirm the existence of the Mozart effect to some degree. The overwhelming body of evidence however debunks it, and the greater representation of studies against the existence of the Mozart effect reflects the consensus thinking at present relating to the original research. That consensus thinking disproves the Mozart effect in the main and has come to expose flaws and shortcomings in the original study. Those flaws have come to represent a kind of new body of knowledge on how not to conduct research on subject matter similar to the Mozart effect, and cautions against the lack of rigor and jumping to conclusions (Wilson and Brown 1997; Nantais and Schellenberg 1999; University of Vienna 2010; Spigel 2010). Aside from the academic papers, which covered various aspects of the Mozart effect and the different aspects of the original 1993 study, from the methods to the analytical frameworks to the assumptions used to the findings, the bibliography amassed for this exercise also made use of relevant articles from other reputable publications, namely some science oriented publications such as Alpha Galileo and the like also reflects the high quality of the scholarship, and provides additional perspectives from the trade, scientific and mass media presses with regard to the topic being investigated. The presence of these support sources that consider various other aspects of the subject matter, and covering too the more current opinions of the original study proponents, add to the overall comprehensiveness of the materials considered for this bibliography. These two aspects, rigor reflected in the quality and the consideration of a great number of perspectives on the subject matter is in keeping with good and balanced scholarship practice (Wilson and Brown 1997; Nantais and Schellenberg 1999; University of Vienna 2010; Spigel 2010). Read More