Kenneth M. Steele

The Mystery of the Mozart Effect: Failure to Replicate

The Mozart effect is the purported increase in spatial-reasoning performance immediately after exposure to a Mozart piano sonata. Several laboratories have been unable to confirm the existence of the effect despite two positive reports from the original laboratory. The authors of the original studies have provided a list of key procedural components to produce the effect. This experiment attempted to produce a Mozart effect by following those procedural instructions and replicating the procedure of one of the original positive reports. The experiment failed to produce either a statistically significant Mozart effect or an effect size suggesting practical significance. This general lack of effect is consistent with previous work by other investigators. We conclude that there is little evidence to support basing intellectual intervention programs on the existence of the Mozart effect.

Listening to Mozart Does Not Enhance Backwards Digit Span Performance

Rauscher, Shaw, and Ky recently reported that exposure to brief periods of music by Mozart produced a temporary increase in performance on tasks taken from the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale-TV. The present study examined whether this effect occurred in performance on a backwards digit span task. In a within-subjects design 36 undergraduates were exposed to 10–min. periods of Mozart music, a recording of rain, or silence. After each stimulus period, undergraduates had three attempts to hear and recall different 9–digit strings in reverse order. No significant differences among treatment conditions were found. There was a significant effect of practice. Results are discussed in terms of the need to isolate the conditions responsible for production of the Mozart effect.

Failure to Confirm the Rauscher and Shaw Description of Recovery of the Mozart Effect

The Mozart effect is an increase in spatial reasoning scores detected immediately after listening to the first movement of a Mozart piano sonata. Rauscher and Shaw (1998) suggested that failure to produce a Mozart effect could arise from carryover effects of a spatial reasoning pretest which may interfere with the effect of listening to Mozart. They cited an unpublished study in which a verbal distractor was inserted between the pretest and listening condition, and the manipulation produced the recovery of a Mozart effect. This experiment attempted to confirm the unpublished study. 206 college students were exposed to one of three sequences, pretest–Verbal distractor material–Mozart, pretest–Mozart–Verbal distractor material, and pretest–Verbal distractor material. An immediate posttest indicated no significant difference on solution of paper folding and cutting items among the three groups. The results do not support Rauscher and Shaw (1998). Our negative results are consistent with prior failures in other laboratories to produce a Mozart effect.

First Names and First Impressions: A Fragile Relationship.

Given only first names, reliable differences are found in guesses about personal characteristics. It was hypothesized that this finding is strongly dependent on the lack of interference from competing information. Therefore such first-name effects should be fragile in that, if a subject is exposed to additional and relevant material, the differential effect of a first name would be mitigated. This interpretation was tested by exposing one group of subjects to a set of good and bad male first names, while a second group encountered the same names accompanied by photographs. The results showed that there was a replication of previously reported differences between these good and bad names if no photograph was present, but the addition of the photograph blocked the differential effect of first names. The results paralleled a similar finding with female first names. Overall, the results argue against too much emphasis on the possible deleterious effects of a particular first name.

Failure to replicate the Mehta and Zhu (2009) color-priming effect on anagram solution times.

Mehta and Zhu (Science, 323, 1226–1229, 2009) hypothesized that the color red induces avoidance motivation and that the color blue induces approach motivation. In one experiment, they reported that anagrams of avoidance motivation words were solved more quickly on red backgrounds and that approach motivation anagrams were solved more quickly on blue backgrounds. Reported here is a direct replication of that experiment, using the same anagrams, instructions, and colors, with more than triple the number of participants used in the original study. The results did not show the Mehta and Zhu color-priming effects, even though statistical power was sufficient to detect the effect. The results call into question the existence of their color-priming effect on the solution of anagrams.

PERCEIVED DEPTH FROM SIMULTANEOUS CHANGES IN LENGTH AND DIRECTION OF A SINGLE LINE

Using a configuration of three lines joined like hands on a clockface, Brigner, Deni, and Hildreth in 1994 reported empirical support for Wallach, Adams, and Weiszs 1956 hypothesis regarding the elicitation of perceived depth by simultaneous changes in length and orientation of a configurations elements. The current investigation extended these findings by showing that perceived depth can be elicited by simultaneous changes in size and orientation of either two lines or a single line.

A LOOMING-RECESSION THRESHOLD

When the origin of magnification-minification of an outline rectangle had a horizontal locus which exceeded one-fourth of the rectangles horizontal dimension, 16 observers of 21 reported apparent depth characteristic of looming and recession.

Changes in Perceived Color with Intermittent Illumination

Using 24 observers with normal color vision, perceived shifts in hue were determined for a yellow-red, green, and blue-green at intermittencies of 5, 10, and 20 cps. The hue shift for yellow-red was consistent with the hue shift exhibited by a deuteranomalous observer while the hue shift for green and blue-green was consistent with that exhibited by a protanomalous observer.