Related Lessons

The Mozart Effect

Although not much harm can come from playing Mozart to babies or encouraging music lessons, if this were to happen in other contexts, the results could be dangerous or wasteful of taxpayer money. Students need to become critical thinkers to separate actual science from advertising claims.

According to Benchmarks: "Skepticism is not just a matter of willingness to challenge authority, though that is an aspect of it. It is a determination to suspend judgment in the absence of credible evidence and logical arguments. Students can learn its value in science, and that is important. Given that most of them will not be scientists as adults, the educational challenge is to help students internalize the scientific critical attitude so they can apply it in everyday life, particularly in relation to the health, political, commercial, and technological claims they encounter." (Benchmarks for Science Literacy, p. 287)


Planning Ahead

Materials:

• a Mozart tape or CD

Students who have heard of the Mozart effect may respond "smarter." If no one says this, ask them, "Do you think this music could make you smarter?"

Then explain that based on studies conducted by researchers in the early 1990s, the state of Georgia started a program to provide every young mother with a CD of Mozart's music and the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences Foundation handed out free CDs of Grammy-winning classical music at hundreds of hospitals in May of 1999.

In this lesson, students will decide whether or not this was a valid thing to do based on the research. 


Development

Introduce the lesson to students by explaining that in 1993 a group of researchers reported that they had conducted a study that found a causal relationship between music and abstract reasoning. (Nature, 1993, 365, p. 611)

Their work seemed to support the view that listening to music can improve the ability to perform complex tasks of spatial reasoning. The researchers gave college students standard tests of spatial reasoning after they had experienced each of three conditions for ten minutes: listening to a Mozart sonata; listening to a relaxation tape; and silence. The subject's performance on spatial reasoning tasks was significantly better after listening to Mozart than after listening to the relaxation tape or silence. 

Have students read these articles:

• Music and Memory and Intelligence from the Neuroscience for Kids website. This article examines the original Mozart Effect study and compares it to subsequent research. It also contains a link where you can order the report on the original study from the National Library of Medicine.
 
• Music on the Mind, which discusses the Mozart Effect and also a study by Martin Gardiner (Nature, May 1996) in which students who were taught to sing using a certain method zoomed ahead of their peers in mathematics. Note: You need to register to Edweek.org in order to read this article. The registration is free.

• Who were the research subjects in the original study?
• Explain the procedure used.
• Does this study prove that listening to Mozart will improve brain development in infants? Why or why not?
• What were some of the other studies that followed the original research? What were the findings of these studies?
• Why do you think that other researchers tried to repeat or verify the findings of the original study? Why is it important that they did so?

Have students working in small groups follow the links in the "Learn More" section of the Music and Memory and Intelligence article. Each group should prepare a brief (5 minute) report on the topic that they explored.

After the groups have made their presentations, ask students to reflect on these questions:

• Do you think that the effect of music on memory and intelligence is worth studying?
• How well should a finding be verified before we use it to make policy decisions?

• What is the danger of being either categorically antagonistic or uncritically positive when evaluating scientific ideas and studies?
• In which ways do people fall prey to false scientific claims? 
• What are the benefits and liabilities to society when the popular media cover scientific stories?

To learn more about rubrics in general, see Make Room for Rubrics on the Scholastic site.

For specific examples of rubrics, more information, and links to other resources, check out the following sites:

• Kathy Schrock's Guide for Educators: Assessment & Rubric Information
• Assessment: Creating Rubrics
• Rubrics for Web Lessons

Created :10/20/2001