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	growing child education

An Ode to Joy: Listening to Music May Not Make Children Smarter But it Will Make Them Dance
By Rebecca L. Green
Issue 93, March/April 1999

"Mozart makes you smart!" Such promises, prompted by a 1995 study by Frances Rauscher, Gordon Shaw, and Katherine Ky that suggested that students who had listened to classical music performed better on intelligence tests, 1 sent parents scrambling to stock up on CDs of Mozart's music. These parents probably were hopeful that listening to one genius would help them create another of their own. But in their rush to embrace the intellectualizing power of music, few people realized that the so-called "Mozart Effect" lasts only for a about ten minutes! In a more recent study, preschool children who took piano lessons performed better on tests of abstract reasoning. But this advantage typically lasted all of one day. 2

So before you start buying classical CDs or sign up your child for a full complement of piano lessons, it's worth taking a closer look at what the newest research on music and mental development really shows. There's no doubt that learning to appreciate and play music enriches life enormously. But will it really make your child the next Einstein or Oppenheimer?

The Music-Mind Connection
The latest research into the connection between music and childhood mental development is based on complex neurological theories about the structure of the cortex. After discovering a link between music and the pattern of neurons fired in the cortex, Rauscher, Shaw, and Ky hypothesized that music can "enhance the cortex's ability to accomplish pattern development, thus improving other higher brain functions." Describing music as a "pre-language," they suggest that the response of the cortex to music could be the Rosetta stone of neurobiology, the code to unlocking many still-mysterious secrets of brain activity.

Of course, no one is claiming that music is an all-purpose stimulant to the brain. Only certain kinds of thinking seem to be affected directly by music: specifically, spatial-temporal reasoning. This skill involves manipulating images over a series of steps. For example, in one task used by Rauscher et al. in their study, subjects were shown a series of folds and cuts in a piece of paper and asked to choose which paper snowflake would be the result.

While this kind of reasoning is important in some areas of mathematics, don't expect that listening to music will help your child remember her multiplication tables. In none of the recent studies did music help to improve memory. In another study that tried to replicate the Rauscher et al. findings, subjects heard a series of digits and were asked to repeat them, backwards. 3 Listening to Mozart first was of no use in this task either.

Why Mozart?
It's no accident that Rauscher, Shaw, and Ky chose Mozart for their initial study. Because Mozart was already composing at the age of four, the researchers wrote in their study, they believed he was "exploiting the inherent repertoire of spatial-temporal firing patterns in the cortex" at an early age. In hoping that his precociousness might rub off, the researchers were not much different than the rest of us. It's quite possible that the Mozart Effect has something to do with Mozart's own reputation as a genius, and with the cultural prestige of classical music in general.

In fact, not every kind of music achieves the Mozart Effect. In the original study by Rauscher, Shaw, and Ky, three groups were tested over three days: Group 1 listened to 10 minutes of silence; Group 2 heard 10 minutes of Mozart's "Sonata for Two Pianos"; Group 3 listened to something different each day: an audiotaped story, a wordless dance piece, and music by Philip Glass, the modern master of minimalist music. Only the Mozart group showed an improvement in their spatial-temporal tasks, even though Group 3 also listened to music. Curiously, their scores remained significantly lower than those of the other groups For whatever reason, the repetitive, trance-like patterns characteristic of Philip Glass's music did not stimulate the brain in the same way as the more organized, segmented phrases of Mozart.

Does this mean you should avoid playing anything too repetitive for your infant? Of course not, especially if it will calm him Actually, folk songs and children's tunes have a phrase structure similar to classical music. Mozart even used the tune we know as "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" as the theme in a series of piano variations.

Listening or Lessons?
In explaining the results of the Mozart study, Rauscher, Shaw, and Ky described the Mozart Effect as a kind of warm-up for the brain The music primes certain centers of the brain for activity. Unfortunately, within 10 minutes the benefits of this warm-up disappear. The question their research obviously raised, however, was could the sponge-like brains of young children be trained to produce a long-term enhancement of spatial-temporal reasoning? This was the hypothesis underlying the next Rauscher study, conducted in 1997, that involved 78 preschool children over a period of two years.

The children were divided into four groups: The first had a 10-minute private keyboard lesson each week; the second practiced group singing for 30 minutes per day; the third received computer lessons comparable in length and personal attention to the keyboard lessons; the fourth group received no special lessons. The children in the keyboard group showed a dramatic improvement on spatial-temporal tasks, the equivalent of moving from the 50th to the 85th percentile on a standard IQ test. The improvement, which lasted for at least a day, qualified as long-term by official psychological standards. The researchers concluded that music lessons, unlike simply listening to music, could produce "long-term modifications in underlying neural circuitry." If listening to Mozart warms up the brain, in other words, piano lessons presumably strengthen the brain's power over a period of time.

There is one catch, however. In addition to the 10-minute private lesson, the preschools had set aside one hour per day for keyboard practice. Potentially, the children taking piano lessons were sitting at the keyboard for five hours longer per week than their classmates in the computer group, and they had at least twice as much musical activity as those in the singing group. Practice is essential to learning a musical skill. Don't expect any improvement, musical or mathematical, without this commitment.

Sound Research?
The findings of these studies have been widely reported in the print media as well as on television and radio and are now well on their way to becoming common knowledge. Yet subsequent attempts to replicate the findings have been disappointing. Most follow-up studies by other researchers have not been able to replicate the Mozart Effect.4

Joan Newman, a psychology professor at the State University of New York ( Albany ) who teaches courses in education and intelligence, conducted a study that found no evidence that listening to Mozart improved students' IQ test scores.5 Nor did a musical background give the subjects any advantage in performance on the tests.

Newman says the media hype over the Rauscher et al. studies is detracting from the debate about the benefits of music in schools. While insisting, "I really do value music education, I want to encourage music," she worries that the studies are leading to false claims and false hopes and expectations about music's impact on intelligence.

But few people want to criticize the findings of these studies. Most of us prefer to promote music in the lives of young children (or adults, for that matter). That said, the implications of this research are rather disturbing. Rauscher et al. conclude their most recent study with the suggestion that music training "may enhance the learning of standard school curricula that draw heavily upon spatial-temporal reasoning abilities, such as mathematics and science." In other words, piano lessons may help to produce more mathematicians and engineers.

But looking at music only in this way shortchanges its potential for social, creative, and, yes, musical development. Carol Scott-Kassner, a professor of music education at the University of Central Florida , is one of the nation's leading specialists in musical development in young children. She likes to think of music as a "first language" in which "the child is playing with sounds, all vocal possibilities, using songs to communicate."

Scott-Kassner says that she feels the Rauscher research has been over-interpreted, and fears that, as a result, it may be misleading. "The whole purpose of exposing young children to music is being undermined as parents and teachers start using it to promote better math grades," she observes.

If we support music only as a stepping stone to a higher IQ, Scott-Kassner concludes, we may be creating unrealistic expectations, especially given the inconclusive findings of other studies of the Mozart Effect.

For now, we should probably approach this research with caution. Even Shaw, one of the authors of the original Mozart Effect study, admits that much more research needs to be done, although he observes wryly that listening to good music does not have any bad side effects.

The final word on the benefits of music should, perhaps, belong to the sage Scott-Kassner, who argues for a common sense approach: "We don't need to make parents more frantic about "improving' their children," she says. "We should want music in our children's lives only for the same reason we want it in our own--in order to make their lives more joy-filled, connected with beauty and spirit. Music is important to our humanness. So, sing a lot, play a wide range of music, listen to songs children sing, take them to concerts. Teach them simply to value music." Mozart would probably agree.

For further information on the music education programs mentioned above, please contact:

AMERICAN ORFF SCHULWERK
ASSOCIATION 440-543-5366

DALCROZE SOCIETY OF AMERICA
212-724-5009

KINDERMUSIK INTERNATIONAL
800-628-5687

ORGANIZATION OF AMERICAN KODOLY EDUCATORS
701-235-0366

SUZUKI ASSOCIATION OF THE AMERICAS
303-444-0948

Other Resources:
CHESKY RECORDS 800-426-8576

CHILDREN'S GROUP 905-831-1995

MUSIC AND YOUNG CHILDREN
800-728-CMYC

MUSIC FOR LITTLE PEOPLE
800-346-4445

SONY MUSIC SPECIAL PRODUCTS
877-602-9360 (toll-free)

Also see the following articles in past issues of Mothering . "Bebop Your Baby," no. 68 and "Keeping the Beat," no. 61.

Notes
1. Frances H. Rauscher, Gordon L. Shaw, and Katherine N. Ky, "Listening to Mozart Enhances Spatial-temporal Reasoning: Towards a Neurophysiological Basis," Neuroscience Letters 185 (1995): 44-47.

2. Frances H. Rauscher, Gordon L. Shaw, Linda J. Levine, Eric L. Wright, Wendy R. Dennis, and Robert L. Newcomb, "Music Training Causes Long-term Enhancement of Preschool Children's Spatial-temporal Reasoning," Neurological Research 19 (February 1997): 2-8.

3. Kenneth M. Steele, Tamera N. Ball, and Rebecca Runk, "Listening to Mozart Does Not Enhance Backwards Digit Span Performance," Perceptual and Motor Skills 84 (1997): 1179-1184.

4. Frances Rauscher and Gordon Shaw responded to the above research in "Key Components of the Mozart Effect," Perceptual and Motor Skills 86 (1998): 835-841.

5. Joan Newman, John H. Rosenbach, Kathryn L. Burns, Brian C. Latimer, Helen R. Matocha, and Elaine Rosenthal Vogt, "An Experimental Test of `The Mozart Effect': Does Listening to His Music Improve Spatial Ability?" Perceptual and Motor Skills 81 (1995): 1379-1387.

Rebecca L. Green has a PhD in musicology. As a writer, she's published articles about a wide variety of music, from 18th century opera to Queen Latifah. She lives in Waterville , Maine , with her partner, a professor of mathematics at Colby College , and their daughter Simone (2).