Psychology: The Mozart Effect

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Psychology is a formative science that has led to revolutionary discoveries as to how the human brain functions, develops and in some instances, can be enhanced. Although these fundamental objectives are a valuable resource within our community, it is vital that they are of verity and can be replicated; if not they are redundant to the field. Unfortunately, due to its youth, psychological science does not have a strict system of checks and balances to ensure that remittance procedures can consistently be undertaken for false claims. To this end, this essay will evaluate the questionable validity of the “Mozart Effect”. The Mozart Effect implies that playing Mozart to a baby will increase its cognitive abilities, a claim which has instigated a rapidly increasing market of “CDS to make your baby smarter”. This claim, despite having partial merit and widespread popular acceptance, is fundamentally incorrect. Through the analysis of various attempted replication studies, it is abundantly clear that the ‘Mozart Effect’ is a falsehood. This is evidenced by: the prominent lack of longevity and replication of successful results; the evaluation of arousal levels on spatial and cognitive enhancement; and, finally, the investigation of procedural flaws in key studies.
While playing Mozart can marginally increase spatial performance, the longevity of the increase is doubtful. Improved performance lasts on average only 10 to 15 minutes rather than overall improved cognitive ability for a long term duration, leading to doubts as to the longevity of the speculated Mozart effect (Chabris, C. 1999; McKelvie, P., & Low, J. 2002; Bangerter, A., & Heath, C. 2004). In addition, these marginal improvements vary in spatial improvement with the origina...

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...dividual reflection and an observationalist reflection on mood of participants should be used.
Although the Mozart effect has shown a varied enhancement of participants’ spatial cognition the claim that ‘Mozart makes babies smarter’ is completely discredited. Through the aforementioned analysis of arousal and mood factors it is clear that cognitive enhancement relies strongly on the participants’ reaction to any stimuli, rather than specifically Mozart. Additionally, the lack of dependency on just one form of stimuli to achieve result indicates that the phenomenon is not specific to Mozart’s sonata. Finally, the limited longevity discredits the importance of the speculated phenomenon as it does not have any long term benefits to the user. Overall, this claim, despite having partial merit is fundamentally incorrect, despite its wide-spread popularist acceptance.

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