Cognitive Daily reports nearly every day on fascinating peer-reviewed developments in cognition from the most respected scientists in the field.
Greta Munger is Associate Professor of Psychology at Davidson College whose works include The History of Psychology: Fundamental Questions. Dave Munger is a writer whose works include Researching Online and The Pocket Reader. And yes, he is married to Greta.
However, for extreme cases of epilepsy, one treatment is to surgically remove the amygdala, the area of the brain which processes, among other things, the sensation of fear. People who have had this surgery fail to recognize fearful facial expressions. A 1978 study in which experimenters stimulated patients' amygdalas directly with electrodes caused them to behave as if they were afraid.
But other efforts to induce fear reactions in patients whose amygdalas have been damaged or removed have had mixed results. One study found that people with damage to the amygdala could not recognize fear in faces, but could recognize fear in voices. Some studies measuring healthy individuals found that screams and yells do activate the amygdala, but others have found no impact of fearful speech prosody (the musical aspects of speech) on the amygdala.
If my twentieth high school reunion last year was any indication, we seem to hang on to the music we listened to as adolescents longer than any other time period. Everyone was dancing to "Purple Rain" and "Rock Lobster" like the music written in 1984 was the best ever written. A 1996 study confirmed this notion, finding that young adults express stronger preference ratings for music than older adults.
Take a look at a random sampling of accounts on MySpace, and you'll see that nearly every member has a song associated with his or her account. It's as if music somehow forms part of a person's identity. But can music also help others get to know a person? Nearly every online dating web site asks participants to list their favorite songs, presumably so potential dating partners can use those preferences to make a character assessment. Are those assessments valid? Is music really a key way people -- especially young people -- learn if prospective mates are compatible?
Peter Rentfrow and Samuel Gosling designed a study to test those questions. In the first part of the study, they simply wanted to see if individuals meeting for the first time talked about music. They recruited sixty University of Texas at Austin students to interact with a randomly-assigned participant they had never met for six weeks on an online bulletin board. Independent raters analyzed the conversations to see how often music and six other topics (books, clothes, movies, TV, football, and other sports) were discussed.
My son Jim's favorite game, World of Warcraft, only works on my computer, which usually resides in the kitchen. Inevitably, Jim's often playing his game while Greta and I are making dinner, and I have to say, the most annoying thing about the game isn't the violence or the sound effects -- it's the background music. We're constantly asking him to turn the volume down so we don't have to listen to that dull, repetitive music.
So don't gamers find music annoying, too? I know when I'm indulging in my one guilty pleasure -- computer golf -- the room must be absolutely silent. Music is the worst, because rather than hitting the ball according to the rhythm of the swing, I tend to lapse into the rhythm of the music, and instead of heading straight down the fairway on the Chateau Whistler course, my ball ends up careening off course into a field of neck-high nettles, or ricocheting off a pine tree and into a pristine mountain brook.
Indeed, in at least one instance (a racing game studied by M. Yamada in 2001), researchers found a negative correlation between certain types of music and performance on the game. But in both this case and my anecdotal example of playing video golf, we're talking about music that's not specifically designed to accompany a game.
January 27 is Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's 250th birthday. In honor of the event, Greta Munger is giving a talk entitled "In the Mood: The Real Mozart Effect" discussing how scientific research addresses the claim that listening to the music of Mozart actually makes you more intelligent.
If you're in the area of Davidson, NC (about 20 miles north of Charlotte), stop by and see her talk, along with several others presented on this special day, including "Mozart in Hollywood" by Neil Lerner and "Grief, Denial, and a Piano Sonata" by Mauro Bothello. The talks are free, and start at 2:30 in Tyler-Talman Hall on the Davidson College campus. I know I'll be there!
As long as you're here, you may want to catch one of the many concerts presented that day, capped off by a sing-along Mozart Requiem. Here's the full list of events.
If you can't make it to the talk, you might want to check out some Cognitive Daily articles on the Mozart effect, here, here, and here.
Now, can you identify the musical style of each clip?
If you said "Classical," you're technically only correct for the first clip. The second clip is actually in the Romantic style (bonus points for identifying the works and composers in the comments!). While both are examples of the classical genre, classical music is also divided into styles corresponding roughly to historical periods: Baroque, Classical, Romantic, and Post-Romantic. Traditionally, only trained musicians have been regarded as being able to easily distinguish between these styles.
But is that ability merely due to musicians' familiarity with individual musical compositions, or is there something about the underlying structure of the music that enables musicians to tell the difference more readily than non-musicians? If the musical structure accounts for the difference, then can non-musicians easily be trained to recognize it, or is extensive musical training required?
Simone Dalla Bella and Isabelle Peretz found an innovative way to address those questions. Simply playing clips like the ones above gives trained musicians an unfair advantage, because they are more likely to be familiar with the specific musical composition. Instead, the researchers had a professional composer write four new compositions in each of the four major styles of classical music. They analyzed each piece for musical similarities and differences, and then played them for three different groups of volunteers: non-musicians familiar with Western music (Canadian college students); trained musicians familiar with Western music (music students at the University of Montreal); and non-musicians unfamiliar with Western music (exchange students from China who had spent less than two years in Canada).
They played the clips, about 30 seconds long each, in pairs. Participants were asked to rate each pair on a scale for similarity, with 1 being "very different" and 7 being "very similar." If training offered a special advantage, then Western musicians should more be able to more readily observe the differences between different musical styles. Further, they should rate music that comes from more distant historical periods as more different than non-musicians. Here are the results:
As you can see, Western musicians did identify the most differences between styles, but even non-Western non-musicians were able to successfully see larger differences between styles that were more historically distant.
A deeper analysis of the data found that all participants were using the same musical criterion to distinguish between styles: the variation in duration of notes, which was measured in two ways. First, the researchers measured the length of each note in a composition and then calculated the standard deviation of this length (a range around the average note length in which most notes fell)—the larger this measure, the more variation in note length occurred. Next, they measured the variability of the difference in length between neighboring notes. Again, the larger this measure, the more variability between notes. The similarity ratings of experts and novices alike correlated strongly to these two measures.
Western musicians with extensive musical training did rely to a certain extent on tonal differences, but even without this training, non-musicians can easily identify different musical styles. So it appears that everyone can discern the differences between musical styles with a minimum of training.
Dalla Bella, S., & Peretz, I. (2005). Differentiation of classical music requires little learning but rhythm. Cognition, 96, B65-B78.
The movie, a fictionalization of the lives of the legendary team of Broadway writers Richard Rogers (music) and Lorenz Hart (words), only addresses its titular conflict obliquely. The implicit answer, of course, is that you can't have one without the other.
Or can you? While it's difficult or perhaps impossible to scientifically determine whether words or music is more important in a song, Isabelle Peretz, Monique Radeau, and Martin Arguin may have done the next-best thing: they devised a study to try to determine whether language or music is more memorable.
In their study, Peretz et al. played recorded snippets of 48 familiar French folk songs to native French speakers. The snippets included two different recognizable parts of the songs: the beginning, and some other portion. (A corresponding example in English would be "happy birthday" and "to you.") A preliminary experiment showed that listeners had difficulty identifying the songs from the middle portions, so the order of the snippets was reversed (so, for example, they would play "to you" followed by "happy birthday.") Listeners were instructed to press a button as soon as they recognized the clip.
This experiment is an example of a priming study (we have discussed several of these before). The basic priming effect is simple: when a participant has been primed with a related word, they can complete a memory task more quickly. For example, if your task is to identify proper nouns, then you'll respond more quickly to "The Beatles" if you've seen "The Rolling Stones" first.
What Peretz's team wanted to know was whether music or language primed song recognition best. To do this, they created two versions of each snippet: one where the words of the song were spoken, and the second where the melody was sung—but instead of singing the words, the performer replaced each syllable with the sound "la". The snippets were combined in four different ways: a spoken prime followed by a spoken target (e.g. "to you happy birthday"), a spoken prime followed by a sung target ("to you la la la la"), a sung prime followed by a sung target ("la la la la la la"), and a sung prime followed by a spoken target ("la la happy birthday"). The primes and targets were differentiated by how they were played: primes were played to just one ear of the listeners' headphones, while targets were played in stereo.
Initially, Peretz et al. found that when listeners were primed in the same way they were tested (e.g. singing followed by singing, or speaking followed by speaking), they reacted more quickly. However, a vastly more significant effect was found for language targets: when the target was spoken, listeners recognized the song nearly twice as quickly as when it was sung.
While this may seem to be a clear victory for words over music, the team noted that spoken words tended to take much less time than the equivalent sung melody. Perhaps participants were merely getting their information more quickly.
So the team repeated the experiment, this time using a computer to speed up the singing to match the pace of spoken language without changing its pitch. While sung melodies were recognized more quickly than they had been previously, there was still a substantial advantage for spoken language.
But perhaps this is due to the more expressive nature of spoken language—while a sung note can only vary in pitch, each syllable of language conveys much more information. To compensate for this, the team added white noise to each spoken snippet, then compared the resulting recordings to the sped-up sung melodies until a pilot group recognized both types of recordings equally quickly. Then they repeated the original experiment again. This time, there was no significant difference between the priming effect of lyrics or melody. Words and music appear to contribute equally to the memorability of a song.
Peretz et al. suggest that this equal contribution of words and music to the priming effect may be due to the natural similarities of the rhythm of speech and song. It makes some sense—after all, lyricists select their words for their rhythmic qualities, and composers try to find music that appropriately complements the words. And try to imagine a musical written by just "Rodgers," or only "Hart." It doesn't have the same ring as "Rodgers and Hart," the team behind such unforgettable songs as "The Lady Is a Tramp," "This Can't Be Love," and "Blue Moon."
Peretz, I., Radeau, M., & Arguin, M. (2004). "Two-way interactions between music and language: Evidence from priming recognition of tune and lyrics in familiar songs." Memory & Cognition, 32(1), 142-152.
Just listening to music, despite the hype associated with the "Mozart Effect," appears to have little influence on IQ or other abilities. It does seem to make us more aroused and put us in a better mood, which can improve performance on tests, but it doesn't actually make us any smarter. But what about actual long-term training in music? Clearly musical training can make us better able to perform and appreciate music, but can it also improve our performance in areas? With its mathematically based notation system, music has been shown to improve mathematical reasoning skills. But surely music is more than just math. What other abilities does it improve?
A group led by William Thompson reasoned that since so many studies have linked music and emotion (we've discussed some of these studies here, here, and here), perhaps musical training can help us perceive emotions in others. We know music can express emotion, and obviously facial expressions can, too. More recent research has suggested that the musical aspects of speech itself—speech prosody—also express emotion. Some theoreticians have speculated that music itself originated with mothers' desire to communicate emotionally with their children through songs. So perhaps musical training itself can help us interpret speech prosody.
Thompson et al. developed a set of experiments to see if there is a relationship between musical training and recognizing speech prosody. They recorded a speaker saying ordinary sentences such as "the chairs are made of wood" while expressing four different emotions: happy, sad, angry, and fearful. Then they transformed the sentences into musical sequences by calculating the average pitch of each syllable. In their first experiment, they tested musically trained and untrained adults. The untrained group had had no formal music instruction, while the trained group had taken at least 8 years and averaged over 13 years of music lessons. Participants listened to the tone sequences and then indicated whether they thought the emotion of the corresponding sentence was angry, sad, happy, or fearful. Here are the results:
The musically trained group was significantly better at identifying the emotion from the sequences than the untrained group. While both groups were not as accurate with the fearful and angry sequences, in every case, the trained group was better at detecting emotion from speech prosody.
But this experiment on its own doesn't show that musical training causes people to be better at interpreting emotion—it might be that the people who've stuck to music lessons for all those years chose music in the first place because of their superior ability to perceive emotion.
To address these concerns, Thompson et al. turned to a group of 7-year-olds that were part of a larger study on the impact of music instruction. These kids had been randomly assigned to groups receiving a year of lessons at the age of six—either drama, keyboard, singing, or no lessons (the kids in the "no lessons" group received a free year of instruction the following year). Since they were randomly assigned, there was no chance that more emotionally sensitive kids had self-selected music lessons.
Though the children were given a simpler test than the adults (they only had to distinguish between two emotions at a time—happy/sad, or anger/fear), the results this time were less clear. There was no difference between the groups when distinguishing between happy and sad. However, in the more difficult anger/fear condition, the results were as follows:
The kids who took keyboard or drama lessons performed statistically better than those with no lessons. However, the result for singing lessons was neither statistically different from the keyboard or drama group, nor the control group. So drama lessons—as may be expected—help perception of speech prosody, as do keyboard lessons, but rather unexpectedly, one year of singing lessons did not lead to an improvement.
Thompson et al. believe that this result for singing lessons can be explained by the different methods used for teaching singing to children compared to keyboard lessons. Singers generally are asked to use pitches that do not correspond to those used in normal prosodic speech—so emotion is not conveyed the same way in song as it is in speaking. Also, singers are often not asked to generate precise pitch—a wide range of pitches around the desired note is usually tolerated, whereas with keyboards, the pitch produced by each key is always identical. Finally, it's possible that just one year of singing instruction is insufficient to affect perception of speech prosody.
Nonetheless, the results of the child study with keyboarding, combined with the adults who have had more years of instruction, suggest that music training does confer real benefits in perceiving emotion.
Thompson, W.F., Schellenberg, E.G., & Husain, G. (2004). Decoding speech prosody: Do music lessons help? Emotion, 4(1), 46-64.
Psychologists have known for decades that people perceive music as happier when it's played faster, and in a major key (mode). Take a listen to the following sound clips I created using a synthesized flute. Each plays the same melody three times—first in a major mode, then a minor mode, then a "whole tone" middle ground. The only difference between the two clips is that the second clip is played twice as fast.
For most people, the second clip sounds happier than the first overall, and the major mode portion sounds happiest within each clip. But what matters most—the speed (tempo), or the mode?
When Kate Hevner first reported on this phenomenon in the 1930s, she demonstrated the relationship between tempo and mode and happiness/sadness judgements, declaring tempo to be the more important of the two. After listening to the clips, you may agree with Hevner, but her data didn't offer a compelling reason to believe that tempo matters more.
Much more recently, Lise Gagnon and Isabelle Peretz found a way to determine which impacts our perception of emotions more—mode or tempo. They developed 8 different melodic sequences (one of which I duplicated in the clips above), and then adapted them to major, minor and whole tone modes. These sequences were then played for paid participants in four different conditions:
Mode change: All sequences were played at the same tempo, in each of the different modes—major, minor, and whole tone
Tempo change: All sequences were played in whole tone mode, at a fast, middle and slow tempo
Convergent: Fast tempo sequences were played in major mode, middle tempo sequences were played in whole tone mode, and slow tempo sequences were played in minor mode
Divergent: Fast tempo sequences were played in minor mode, middle tempo sequences were played in whole tone mode, and slow tempo sequences were played in major mode
After hearing each sequence, participants rated it on a scale of 1 (happiest) to 10 (saddest). The Mode and Tempo change conditions were included simply to replicate earlier work by Hevner and others, and as expected, the major mode and faster tempo were associated with happier ratings. Gagnon and Peretz expected to find stronger happiness and sadness ratings in the Convergent condition, because mode and tempo effects were combined. As they expected, in the Convergent condition, participants rated combined fast, major mode sequences as significantly happier than either major mode or fast tempo by themselves.
The Divergent condition was the key to the experiment—when, for example, a fast tempo was combined with a minor key, or a slow tempo was combined with a major mode, tempo always took precedence. Slow tempo, even when associated with a major mode, was rated sad, and fast tempo, even when associated with a minor mode, was rated happy.
But what if the only reason for this difference is that the tempo changes were more dramatic than the mode changes? Gagnon and Peretz had doubled the speed of the sequences, from 110 beats per minute for the slow tempo to 220 for fast tempo. What if the tempo change were made less dramatic—would the results still hold? The researchers figured out a way to generate tempo changes that were roughly equivalent to mode changes: they tested the sequences with a new group of volunteers, but this time they used many different tempos, until they found a set of three whose happiness and sadness ratings were roughly equal to those found in the Mode Change condition. This time, the fast tempo was reduced to only 160 beats per minute.
They now repeated the entire experiment using the smaller range of tempos. Even though participants had rated tempo-only and mode-only changes as the same, in the Divergent condition, tempo once again took precedence. So it appears that tempo is more important than mode in determining whether a musical selection is happy or sad.
Gagnon, L., & Peretz, I. (2003). Mode and tempo relative contributions to "happy-sad" judgements in equitone melodies. Cognition and Emotion, 17(1), 25-40.
Music can be used to convey a range of emotion, from sadness to happiness, from anger to fear. We use music to help fall asleep at night, and to wake up in the morning. Its effect on our mood may be enough to improve our performance on a range of intellectual tasks. But where do these effects come from? Are we born with an association between music and emotion, or does it develop as we grow older?
Studies have found some evidence for an appreciation of music even in infants. Babies as young as 9 months old prefer musical scales to monotonic scales—the notes in the western musical scale do not progress in even increments, and babies seem to "know" this. So we do appear to have some innate ability to appreciate music, but how sophisticated is that ability? Do small children and even babies experience the same emotions as adults when listening to music?
A team led by Simone Dalla Bella tested children ranging in age from three to eight, as well as adults, by playing musical excerpts for them and asking whether the music was happy or sad. The participants listened to 32 pieces of classical music, 16 of which were determined to be "happy" and 16 "sad" in a previous study. In addition, the same pieces were systematically altered by changing mode (from major to minor key or vice versa), tempo, or both. Sad music is generally played in a minor key at a slow tempo, and happy music is usually played fast and in a major key. The researchers found that when happy music was slowed down to the same tempo as sad music, it no longer sounded musical; likewise for sad music played as fast as happy music, so they settled on a moderate tempo inbetween the happy and sad tempi (about 84 beats per minute), and adjusted both the happy and sad music to be played at this rate.
As expected, the adults rated the happy and sad music correctly. When the tempo of happy music was slowed, it was rated as sadder. The mode changes had larger effects, and the combined tempo and mode change had the largest effect of all. The children, instead of rating on a numerical scale, pointed to happy or sad faces to indicate the emotion conveyed by the music. Three and four-year-olds were not able to complete the task, rating it no more accurately than random chance. For older children, however, a more complex pattern emerged. Take a close look at this graph charting the results:
Responses were counted as "correct" when the participants rated the music with the same emotion conveyed by the original, unaltered songs. The tempo and mode changes should make the happy music seem sadder and the sad music seem happier. So, for example, if a happy song's tempo was changed and the listener then rated it as "sad," this would be graphed as an incorrect response. We can see, for adults, that this is exactly what happened. Fewer adults gave "correct" responses when tempo and mode were changed.
For children, however, we see a split. Six- to eight-year-olds, like adults, respond to both tempo and mode changes. Five-year-olds respond to tempo changes like adults and older children, but for mode changes, their ratings aren't significantly different from the original, unaltered piece. It appears that five-year-olds determine happiness or sadness solely from tempo and not from mode.
Dalla Bella and her colleagues argue that the ability to understand mode as an expression of emotion is learned between the ages of five and six, but they are less certain about when tempo becomes associated with emotion. It's possible that the reason three- and four-year-olds were unable to perform the task is related to not understanding the procedure of pointing to happy and sad faces, or to unfamiliarity with the classical music samples. What is certainly clear is that six-year-olds have mastered matching both tempo and mode changes to their corresponding emotions.
Dalla Bella, S., Peretz, I., Rousseau, L., & Gosselin, N. (2001). A developmental study of the affective value of tempo and mode in music. Cognition, 80, B1-B10.
How do we reconcile the variety of results that have been found with respect to the Mozart effect—the idea that the music of Mozart can lead to improved performance on spatial ability tests? With some researchers appearing to have found no effect at all, and others claiming dramatic effects, who are we to believe? In just the research we've reviewed here at Cognitive Daily, we've got Ivanov and Geake reporting a pronounced effect for both Mozart and Bach, Jackson and Tlauka arguing that there's no Mozart effect for route learning, and McKelvie and Low declaring "final curtains for the Mozart effect."
These studies all make different claims, but now some researchers believe they have found a common thread. The music causing the effect isn't limited to Mozart: Bach and Schubert effects have been documented. In both the Jackson and Tlauka study and the McKelvie and Low research, the experimenters compared different types of music (Philip Glass and Aqua) to Mozart, but didn't include a non-musical control, so it's possible that all these types of music produce the effect. So what kind of music doesn't lead to the effect?
A team of researchers led by Gabriela Husain may have found the answer. They note that previous research has established that people score better on cognitive measures when they are in a good mood and/or are in an aroused state. Perhaps all these different types of music either arouse people or put them in a positive mood. Several studies have established that a fast tempo leads to arousal, and that works played in a minor key can induce a negative mood.
Building on this research, Husain and her colleagues decided to systematically alter the Mozart Sonata for Two Pianos and test people's spatial ability, mood, and arousal levels after listening to the different versions. They had a skilled pianist play the sonata into a MIDI sequencer, allowing them to easily manipulate tempo. They created a fast version (165 beats per minute [bpm], or about 35 percent faster than the score) and a slow version (60 bpm, half as fast as the score). Next, they took each version and transposed it to a minor key (from D major to D minor), taking care to fix several odd-sounding notes resulting from the process. Volunteers were divided into four groups, each of which listened to a different version of the sonata before taking the paper folding and cutting test that purports to measure spatial ability. Here are the results:
There was a significant difference between scores of participants who listened to the fast versions compared to the slow versions. The highest scores were achieved by the fast/major group, and by far the lowest scores came from the slow/minor group. But how did these results compare to the arousal and mood scores? The groups listening to the fast versions were more aroused, and groups listening to major versions were in more positive moods than those listening to minor key versions. In fact, 58 percent of the variation in the results on the spatial reasoning test were attributable to mood, arousal, or enjoyment of the music. Differences in musical structure, by comparison, accounted to just 12 percent of the variation.
Husain et al. argue that it's the changes in mood and arousal which account for the improvement in spatial abilities—and music is not the only way to affect mood and arousal. Just giving someone a candy bar, for example, will reliably improve their mood, but we don't talk about a "candy bar effect." It's certainly possibly that the 12 percent variation in the data attributable to musical structure may be the result of some small "Mozart effect," but Husain and her colleagues believe it's more likely that this result is simply an artifact of imperfect measurement of mood, arousal, and spatial ability.
So what's the bottom line? Should parents invest hundreds of dollars exposing their kids to classical music, in order to make them "smarter"? It probably won't hurt, but the data suggest that what's more important is to make sure your kids approach tests with a positive attitude. Of course, as the parent of a 13-year-old whose mood typically ranges from glum to glummer, I know that's often easier said than done.
Husain, G., Thompson, W. F., & Schellenberg, E. G. (2002). Effects of musical tempo and mode on arousal, mood and spatial abilities. Music Perception, 20(2), 151-171.
One of my best friends in college played music incessantly—whether he was studying, writing papers, completing organic chemistry problem sets, or swilling down cheap beer, whatever he did was accompanied by a nonstop 1980s synth-pop beat. This apparently did him no harm, because after graduating at the top of his class, he went on to get a PhD and a law degree, with full scholarships paying for both.
I could never study with him because the music always broke my concentration. I preferred to study to the gentle background noise of the campus coffee shop. There was one exception to this rule: when I was writing a paper, I would always play Mozart's Piano Concerto #23. Perhaps it was just superstition, but I really believed it helped me concentrate. Even playing a Mozart symphony did not produce the same effect for me—only the piano music worked.
A few years after I graduated from college, the research of Rauscher et al. appeared to back up my superstition—listening to Mozart's piano music actually raised spatial IQ scores. But, as I noted a few days ago, the data collected subsequently on the "Mozart effect" has been mixed, and several prominent researchers have pronounced "final curtains" or a "requiem" for the Mozart effect.
But what of my own experiences writing papers (which I still employ sometimes when inspiration founders—though I've now expanded my collection to include concertos 9, 21, 22, 25, and 27)? And what of the research that did show an effect? Where is that coming from?
Some recent research has begun to find answers. I'll discuss two such studies today, and a third next week. First, Vesna Ivanov and John Geake studied three classrooms of 5th and 6th graders. For one class, Mozart's sonata for two pianos was played both before and during the standard paper folding and cutting task used for nearly all Mozart effect research. In this task, a piece of paper is folded several times, and then holes are punched in it. Students must imagine where the holes will be when the paper is unfolded. The second class listened to Bach's Toccata in G major while completing the task, and the third class took the test in silence. Here are their results:
While they found no difference between Mozart and Bach, both classes that listened to music performed better on the test than the class that worked in silence. So apparently the Mozart effect isn't limited to Mozart. Indeed, the effect has also been found with the music of Schubert, and even the new age performer Yanni (apparently no one has yet tested '80s synth pop). Ivanov and Geake offer some interesting guesses as to why the music improves performance. They point to Rausher's argument that cognitive processing levels remain essentially the same while listening to Mozart's music. They also suspect that music may help to mask the otherwise distracting background noise that is present in nearly all "silent" classrooms.
Trying to sort through the varied results on the Mozart effect, Catherine Jackson and Michael Tlauka conducted a study in which they used a different task: instead of a paper folding task, participants negotiated through a virtual maze on a computer screen. They noted that other researchers had found the effect with paper-and-pencil mazes, so it seemed likely that Mozart might also improve performance on virtual mazes.
Jackson and Tlauka's participants did the task twice: once after listening to Mozart's piano sonata, and once while listening to Philip Glass's Music with Changing Parts. None of the participants did the task following a period of silence. While the participants were able to learn the maze, the Mozart music did not lead to an improvement compared to the Philip Glass. Jackson and Tlauka argue that this means the Mozart effect is not generalizable—if it's only valuable for pencil and paper tasks, then what real-world application could it possibly have.
But one interesting thing to note about these two studies is that they're not really finding anything different. Both studies found that different music can lead to improvements in special reasoning. Since Jackson and Tlauka did not include a "silent" condition in their study, we don't know if their results are any different from Ivanov and Geake.
What these two studies do reveal is that Mozart's music isn't unique—that other music can have a similar effect. But the studies can only offer guesses as to why there does seem to be some effect of listening to music on spatial reasoning. I'll continue to explore this issue next week.
Ivanov, V.K., & Geake, J.G. (2003). The Mozart effect and primary school children. Psychology of Music, 31(4), 405-413.
Jackson, C.S., & Tlauka, M. (2004). Route-learning and the Mozart effect. Psychology of Music, 32(2), 213-220.
The "Mozart Effect" hit the mainstream media by storm in the mid 1990s, in the form of a bestselling book by the same name. A Google search for the topic still reveals a slew of products designed to exploit the effect—to increase IQ, or overall well-being, or even physical health.
The psychological basis for the effect is a 1993 study by a team led by Frances Rauscher, which found a much more limited effect: scores on a spatial IQ test were 8 to 9 points higher after listening to a Mozart sonata, compared to testing following exposure to relaxation stimuli. The result was astounding: simply listening to Mozart could actually improve test scores. Rauscher and her colleagues have been careful to point out that the effect is short-lived, is limited to specific measures of spatial IQ, and may not be of any practical use, but these caveats didn't stop sales of Mozart CDs from skyrocketing.
Since that time, many researchers have attempted to replicate the effect, with varying degrees of success. Bruce Rideout was able to match Rauscher et al.'s results in several studies, but a team led by Kenneth Steele, using a somewhat different methodology, was not.
Searching for a more definitive answer, Pippa McKelvie and Jason Low decided to try both Rideout's and Steele's methodology in the same study. There were a few key differences, however. In their testing, Steele, Rideout, and Rauscher had all tested college students, but McKelvie and Low tested 11- to 13-year-olds (this makes sense, given that most "Mozart effect" merchandise is marketed to parents of young children). In experiment 1, designed to match Steele's methods, McKelvie and Low also addressed a Rauscher criticism of Steele's research. Steele had compared listening to Mozart to listening to a standup comic routine and found no difference in spatial abilities. Rauscher suggested that listening to a contrasting musical form might yield better results. So in their task, McKelvie and Low used repetitive dance music by the group Aqua to compare to Mozart.
Students were divided into two groups—one which listened to Aqua first, and the other which listened to Mozart first. After listening to an 8-minute musical excerpt, students were tested on spatial ability. Then they listened to the other excerpt and took a different version of the same test. The result: no significant difference for any of the music. All the test scores were statistically the same. There wasn't even a trend for Mozart.
In experiment 2, designed to match Rideout's methods, a more complex design was used. The major difference was that Rideout's procedure involved a relaxation sequence instead of contrasting music. However, while Rideout's relaxation tape involved verbal cues for relaxation, McKelvie and Low used a musical relaxation CD—selections from Debussey's Clair de Lune. Eight different variations comparing both Mozart and Aqua to the relaxation sequence were made, and none of them resulted in significant differences.
Where does this leave us? McKelvie and Low argue that this means there really is no Mozart effect. The only major difference between their replication and Rideout's procedure was the use of musical rather than verbal relaxation sequences. If contrasting music doesn't result in lower IQ scores, then we're really not talking about Mozart enhancing spatial IQ scores, we're talking about verbal relaxation tapes inhibiting them. In any case, the Mozart effect is clearly so limited that it's probably not worth parents' or researchers' time trying to coax out an effect. Surely actual studying and learning will have a greater positive impact than trying to decide on the perfect pre-test music.
McKelvie, P., and Low, J. (2002). Listening to Mozart does not improve children's spatial ability: Final curtains for the Mozart effect. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 20, 241-258.
Though you'll never hear her tell you, Greta is an excellent musician. She's a brilliant English horn and oboe player, and she can also handle the piano keyboard. When a nonmusician hears her play, they'll often tell her how they wished their parents had made them practice when they were younger (unfortunately, our kids Jim and Nora don't seem to appreciate this logic when we tell them it's time to practice!). Everyone appreciates a good musician, but if the responses of our own children are any indication, few of us are willing to put in the practice it takes to learn to perform well.
We all seem to have an intuitive sense that learning to play music is "good for you," but what does the research say? Many studies have indicated that there is a correlation between music lessons such positive traits as memory, mathematics achievement, and even reading ability, but does this correlation result from the music lessons themselves, or simply being fortunate enough to have parents that make you practice? Maybe parents who make their kids practice also put more emphasis on doing homework. Maybe musical ability is related to general intelligence—so it's the reading and math skills that make good musicians, and not the other way around.
E. Glenn Schellenberg of the University of Toronto developed a study to try to find a causal link between music lessons and intelligence ("Music Lessons Enhance IQ", Psychological Science, 2004). In his experiment, six-year-olds were randomly selected to participate in keyboard, voice, and drama lessons for one year and compared with a group of kids who took no lessons. All the children took IQ tests at the beginning and end of the study. Since the children were selected randomly, there was no chance that the parents' influence would account for the difference between kids. The following chart shows the change in the each group's IQ over the course of the study:
All children participating in the study showed a rise in IQ, which Schellenberg attributes to the fact that they were all just starting kindergarten (and notice that this component of the IQ increase is bigger than any other effect). However, the kids who took music lessons did show a significantly greater IQ rise than both the kids in drama lessons or the kids with no lessons. The fact that taking drama lessons does not also increase IQ shows that the type of lessons matter: just any lessons outside of school won't help. So it appears that music lessons aren't merely valuable for teaching musical skills; they also transfer that benefit onto general intelligence.
It's important to note that "intelligence" as measured by IQ tests isn't the only worthwhile ability. The children in drama class, for example, demonstrated improvements in adaptive social behavior during the same period (and this was the only group with such an increase). This type of behavior, as noted in a recent Cognitive Daily article, can lead to improved academic achievement later in school.
I like rock music, but my father-in-law doesn't. My son Jim likes horror movies, but his mom doesn't. While some of our preferences can be explained easily—for example, we usually don't like things that cause us pain—others are more difficult to understand. When there's not an obvious reason for a preference, mere exposure to an item can lead to preference. Studies have found this "mere exposure effect" for words, photos, objects—nearly anything, really.
What's less certain is what causes the mere exposure effect: two competing explanations have been proposed. The first is the uncertainty reduction hypothesis—the idea that we simply prefer things which are more familiar. The second explanation, the misattribution hypothesis, is more complex. It begins with the same concept, that we're sometimes more familiar with one item than another, but suggests that whether we actually develop a preference depends on whether or not we remember why we're familiar with it. If an item was only presented subliminally, meaning we're not aware of the instance when it was presented, then we're more likely to misattribute that recollection to actual preference, compared to items presented liminally (overtly). So preference occurs more readily when it's subtly suggested to us, compared to when we're hit over the head with it.
Some research supports both hypotheses, however: both overt and subliminal presentations of items can lead to preference. But what if some items are presented overtly and some are presented subliminally? Which will we prefer then? Man-Ying Wang and Hsio-Chuan Chang of Soochow University believe they have devised an experiment to determine which of the two views better explains how we form preferences ("The Mere Exposure Effect and Recognition Memory," Cognition and Emotion, 2004). To develop their experiment, Wang and Chang needed to make one more distinction: between knowing and remembering. When we "know" something, we're completely aware of its existence, but we don't recall the specific instance when we learned of it. When we "remember," we're recalling a particular occasion. If remembering leads to preference, then that supports the uncertainty reduction hypothesis. If knowing does, that supports the misattribution hypothesis.
In their experiment, Wang and Chang played music excerpts of classical music for listeners. Next they played the same excerpts in a random order, along with some new excerpts that the listeners hadn't yet heard. Listeners rated the items for how much they liked them on a scale of 1 to 5 and indicate whether or not they were new. Here is a summary of the results.
Actually Old
Actually New
Judged Old
3.33
3.07
Judged New
2.79
2.75
When listeners thought the excerpt was old, they liked it better—whether or not the excerpt actually was old. So listeners prefer the items they remember, rather than those they know—when they believe they recall hearing a specific excerpt, they like it better. Wang and Chang argue that this result supports the uncertainty reduction hypothesis. They suggest that we prefer things we've seen or heard before because these things are less likely to be dangerous: after all, if it didn't kill us the first time we saw it, it's probably safe. So it might be that the reason I like rock music while my father in law doesn't is because I had heard it as a child, while he didn't. Since I had more exposure to rock, I like it and he doesn't. Now apparently we just need to find out who showed all those horror movies to Jim when he was younger!
The allure of music has been a recurring question for psychologists. Why do we see the need for music? Is music like language, or is it something entirely different? The attempts to answer the latter question have generated mixed results. Musicians with brain damage have retained musical ability while losing language ability. Some patients with a condition called amusia can recognize songs from their lyrics but not from the melody. On the other hand, healthy people remember melodies better when they are repeated with their original lyrics instead of the words from other songs.
The two songs are identical except for the last two chords (and it's pretty clear that neither is going to be topping the charts any time soon!). Song 1 ends with "tonic" musical progression, while Song 2 ends with a "subdominant" progression. While subdominant progressions are common in Western music, it's an unusual way to end this song. A team of researchers led by Bénédicte Poulin-Charronnat of Université de Bourgogne used these two melodies to see if they could come to a better understanding of how language and music are related (Bénédicte Poulin-Charronnat, Emmanuel Bigand, François Madurell, and Ronald Peereman, "Musical Structure Modulates Semantic Priming in Music," Cognition, 2005).
They asked volunteers to listen to a set of songs sung to these two melodies. The words to the songs were cleverly varied in two different ways. Sometimes the final word in the song was replaced with a word that did not make sense, for example "The giraffe has a very long neck" would be replaced with "The giraffe has a very long foot." In other instances, the final word was replace with a nonsense word, e.g. "The giraffe has a very long veck" (these are rough translations—the actual experiment was conducted in French). The task was simply to indicate if the last word was a word or a non-word.
In principle, the music played to accompany the words was irrelevant to the task, but in fact, participants responded differently depending on what melody was being played. When the final word was related to the rest of the song ("neck," in our example), participants were more accurate when the tonic melody was played. But when the final word was unrelated ("foot"), participants were more accurate with the subdominant melody.
So clearly the music is affecting our understanding of language—but how? Poulin-Charronnat et al. performed their study on both musicians and non-musicians, and the results were the same for each, so the result was not simply a product of musical training. The researchers speculate that music demands some of the cognitive resources available for processing language, and that different musical structures require different resources, so each melody being played will affect language differently. Music and language do appear to rely on some of the same cognitive processes. Unfortunately for aspiring American Idol contestants, however, being able to speak the language still doesn't mean you can sing in tune.
We often think of music as expressing emotions, and research has backed this notion up. But typically the research has focused on melodic instruments: sweet, sorrowful violins; bright, happy guitars; melancholy, wailing oboes. So what about percussion instruments: drums, cymbals, tympani—can they express emotion too?
Listen to the following short music clips. As you listen, try to determine what emotion they are expressing. Think of it as a multiple choice test. You get to choose between solemn, tender, fearful, angry, sad, or happy.
Could you discern a difference? If you scroll down to the end of this post, you'll see the "answers." Petri Laukka and Alf Gabrielsson, of Uppsala University tested the idea that drums could express emotion by playing clips of drum performances and asking volunteers to rate them on a scale of 0 to 10 for how they expressed the emotions listed above ("Emotional Expression in Drumming Performance," Psychology of Music, 2000). The passages were performed by two different professional musicians, who were simply instructed to play their choice from three specified rhythms on an electronic drum set while trying to express each of the emotions.
The graph below presents some of the results of the study. The columns in the graph represent average listener ratings of the music. The dark blue columns indicate responses that are significantly different from the others in the same row.
Listeners could accurately indicate which emotions the drummers were attempting to express, even though the drummers were limited in the instruments and rhythms they could utilize.
So how do drummers express these different emotions? Laukka and Gabrielsson analyzed the musical qualities of the performances for each drummer and emotion, and they found that for each emotion, the drummers chose a similar tempo and sound volume level. For example, to play sad music, both drummers played very quietly, and their tempos were nearly the same (61 and 73 beats per minute). For happy music, both musicians tripled the tempo and increased the sound level. Neither musician deviated much from the initial tempo he or she chose for the music, except in the case of "fearful."
When you listen to the drumbeat of a musical composition, it often seems that the drums are simply keeping time. In fact, they also help listeners appreciate the emotions the composer and musicians are trying to express. Though how exactly the listeners perceive the same emotion that the musicians attempt to express is still a mystery, it's amazing to realize that something as simple as a ringing cymbal or beating drum can mean so much.
Here are the answers to the musical quiz above:
Clip 1: Happy
Clip 2: Sad
Clip 3: Angry
Clip 4: Fearful
To generate the sounds, Travis Lloyd used a synthesizer to match the average tempo and volume indicated by Laukka and Gabrielsson in their study. If you're like most people, your answers should match the results of the study.
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My son Jim's favorite game, World of Warcraft, only works on my computer, which usually resides in the kitchen. Inevitably, Jim's often playing his game while Greta and I are making dinner, and I have to say, the most annoying thing about the game isn't the violence or the sound effects -- it's the background music. We're constantly asking him to turn the volume down so we don't have to listen to that dull, repetitive music.
January 27 is Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's 250th birthday. In honor of the event, Greta Munger is giving a talk entitled "In the Mood: The Real Mozart Effect" discussing how scientific research addresses the claim that listening to the music of Mozart actually makes you more intelligent.
