Mozart effect–Shmozart effect: A meta-analysis
Introduction
The publication of the finding of Rauscher et al. (1993) that subjects score higher in standardized tests assessing spatial task performance after exposure to the first movement “allegro con spirito” of the Mozart sonata KV 448 for two pianos in D major (mean-differences of 8–9 IQ points in the spatial reasoning subtest of the Stanford–Binet Intelligence Scale) entailed vast interest in the scientific community, as well as in popular media. Although the Mozart effect was originally demonstrated in college students and employed tests measuring only spatial ability, popular media referring to this finding reported that exposure to Mozart music will somehow enhance the intelligence of children. The result of this fad was the development of a commercial industry, selling dozens of different records, tapes, and CDs of Mozart music, all of them supposed to have a positive impact on children's intelligence. The craze peaked as Georgia governor Zell Miller issued in 1998, that every mother of a newborn should get a free compact disc with Mozart music to foster their offspring's intelligence (R. Jones, 1999). There were even books published on how to stimulate the minds of kids using Mozart music to ensure IQs of children would develop to be above average (e.g., Campbell, 2002).
Nonetheless, in the scientific community, the original finding was heavily contested. In the majority of replications of this study, exposure to the Mozart sonata KV 448 showed only small enhancement of performance on spatial tasks compared to treatment conditions that had subjects waiting in silence (e.g., ⁎Gilleta et al., 2003, ⁎Jones & Estell, 2007) or had them exposed to non-musical stimuli (e.g., ⁎Flohr et al., 1995, ⁎Steele, Brown & Stoecker, 1999) for the same amount of time (usually 8 min 24 s) it took to administer the Mozart sonata. However, evidence in favor or against the Mozart effect seemed to be published roughly in equal parts, thus rendering primary studies powerless to resolve the issue whether or not the effect exists.
Chabris, 1999, Hetland, 2000 used meta-analytic methods to assess the effect and settle the dispute, but yielded contradictory results. The analysis of Chabris (1999) included only published studies, but additionally included studies employing reasoning tests as dependent measure. Thus, overall effect size for the effect of the Mozart sonata on spatial ability was based on only 15 study effects (d = 0.14). In the analysis performed by Hetland (2000), unpublished studies were included and only spatial ability tests were employed as dependent measure in each study, yielding 36 study effects (d = 0.46). However, musical stimuli in treatment conditions were not confined to the Mozart sonata, but any kind of (supposedly enhancing) musical stimulus was used for overall effect size estimation. Neither of these two analyses assessed influences of possibly confounding publication bias.
The present study represents the so far biggest meta-analysis (39 studies, yielding 38, 11, and 15 study effects for different treatment conditions) on this subject to answer the question whether or not there exists a Mozart effect. Since there is evidence that studies whose results do not support the research hypotheses are less likely to be published (Blumenthal et al., 1997, Ioannidis, 1998, Smith, 1980), influence of publication bias on the overall effect was hypothesized.
Section snippets
Literature search
To identify relevant studies, a comprehensive literature search in a variety of electronic databases was performed (Datenbank deutschsprachiger Diplomarbeiten Psychologie [database of theses in German language in Psychology], PsycINFO, PubMed, UMI Dissertations, and Web of Science). Entered search terms were “mozart”,“mozart AND effect”, “mozart AND effekt”,“music AND cognit*”, “music AND spatial”, “musik AND kognit*”, “musik AND raumvorstellung”, in order to assess studies of English- as well
Combined effect sizes
Overall standardized mean differences for three pairs of stimulus conditions on spatial task performance were obtained (Fig. 1). First, samples exposed to the Mozart sonata scored significantly higher on spatial tasks than samples exposed to non-musical stimuli or no stimulus at all (MO-NM) yielding d = 0.37 (p < .001, 95% CI [0.23, 0.52], 38 study effects). Second, samples exposed to the Mozart sonata KV 448 scored significantly higher on spatial tasks than samples exposed to any other kind of
Discussion
This study clearly demonstrates that there is only little support for a specific Mozart effect in published as well as in unpublished work. Although results indicate a positive, significant effect of exposure to the Mozart sonata (KV 448) compared to no stimulus at all on spatial task performance, observed effects were only small in size. Moreover, exposure to other musical stimuli compared to exposure to no stimulus at all yielded a significant overall effect of about the same size. There is a
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References marked with an asterisk indicate studies included in the meta-analysis.