A great deal of media attention has been paid in recent years to a supposed benefit of listening to Mozart’s music — the so-called Mozart effect. According to the scientists who first reported it, what specifically does the Mozart effect accomplish?
A) Confers a sense of inner peace B) Enhances concentration C) Improves spatial-temporal reasoning ü D) Stimulates memory formation
Despite the large claims that have been made for this so-called effect — that it will enhance intelligence, develop creativity, and much more — such research as supports it at all does not go nearly so far. According to one view, the effect is simply an instance of a well-known phenomenon called “enjoyment arousal”, in which a subject’s performance at certain kinds of task improves when exposed to enjoyable music. Perhaps the real Mozart effect is that the number of children exposed to large quantities of Mozart would have been much smaller were it not for the Mozart effect.
