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Abstract:
A widely held belief is that music cognition is correlated
with other functions such as mathematical skills or spatial
reasoning. Further, all of these skills are often believed to be
subserved by the right cerebral hemisphere. Empirical support for
the existence of such relations has been recently provided by
Rauscher and Shaw (1993). This influential study showed that
exposure to 10 minutes of Mozart entails a short-term enhancement
in spatial-temporal reasoning, compared to silence. This finding is
now referred to as the "Mozart effect". Given the theoretical and
practical relevance of such a finding, we decided to re-examine the
Mozart effect in two independent Canadian laboratories. In the
Montreal study, 32 students had to perform one of two
spatial-temporal tasks (Paper Folding and Matrices from the
Stanford-Binet intelligence scale) in two conditions
(within-subjects design). One task was performed after 10 minutes
of silence and the other task after 10 minutes of Mozart's music
(order was counterbalanced). In the London study, a
between-subjects design was used instead, so that 72 students were
tested on a single task (Paper Folding) in each condition (silence
or music). In both studies, we failed to replicate the Mozart
effect. Although negative, these results are consistent with the
view that music cognition is an independent mental faculty that is
not confined to a single cerebral hemisphere.
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