Mozart madness

It started back in 1993 as an academic time-killer, a scholarly divertissement, if you will. Three University of California-Irvine researchers, led by psychologist Frances Rauscher, measured the performance of 36 UCI students on spatial-thinking tests (predicting the shape of piece of paper after being told how it would be folded and cut) after 10 minutes of various aural stimuli — silence, a “relaxation” tape, Mozart’s Sonata in D Major for Two Pianos.

Their findings, published in a modest, one-page letter in the journal Nature that October, reported that the Mozart selection produced a sort-term improvement that could be equated to a temporary eight-to-nine point increase in IQ. No great claims were made; the level-headed researchers rightly viewed it as one more tiny step in unlocking the secrets of the human brain.

But from there, an industry — Mozart Effect Inc. — was born. The news media, always eager to misconstrue scientific research, bellowed “Mozart makes you smarter.” Best-sellers were written, lecture tours mounted, infomercials clogged the airwaves, Mozart Effect tapes and CDs flooded the market. A device to deliver Amadeus in utero became standard equipment for parents-to-be. Mozart cured everything from backache to writer’s block.

Several states handed out free Mozart Effect recordings to babies; one even mandated a half-hour of Mozart in day-cares receiving state funding. Toddlers, who would have been much happier singing “Old MacDonald” with mommy and daddy, were force-fed the Jupiter Symphony.

And now the Mozart Effect is debunked, despite it never having been, in the strict scientific sense, bunked at all. The new issue of Nature contains a meta-study, a compilation of 16 attempts to replicate the original study, and finds no significant increase in IQ. The news media, not wanted to be bothered with the details of the purposes of meta-studies, is singing a requiem for the Mozart Effect.

Good. Scholars back to antiquity have observed a distinct correlation between music education — specifically, participating in music performance — and intellectual development. If high-level thinking can be stimulated by aural input, the subtle surprise, the wit, the delicate yet unbreakable architecture of Mozart’s music would be just what the Ph.D. ordered.

But if there is a shortcut to developing a child’s intellect, and to instilling an appreciation of the heights humans at their best can achieve, it won’t be found by slapping a set of headphones on the kid. The engagement hat that comes from a little “oink, oink here” is a better fit.