In the introduction to the Mozart effect, its origins and popularization, we saw that there was a determining study that drove the "movement" and that, however, was not demonstrated in subsequent research.
Which was no impediment for the supposed increase in intelligence that produced listening to certain Mozart music It remained in vogue and many parents believed that their children would be smarter thanks to the Austrian composer.
Don Campbell and Baby Mozart
The American musician and businessman Don Campbell also promulgated the benefits of Mozart's music, already from the womb. He is one of the authors most benefited by this theory. He has published books and albums by the Austrian composer about the alleged existence of the "Mozart effect".
After the success of his book “The Mozart effect” published in 1997 and translated into 14 languages, one of the albums published by him ranked first in the list of best-selling albums in the Amazon.com Internet library, and two others were among the top ten of the sales lists.
Don Campbell comes to admit in a recent interview in TIME magazine:
I think that we cannot prove or discard anything (...) to be very honest, we have not yet understood why music has such an influence on the brain.
But his ideas are too good for parents who want the best for their babies, who are the most handsome, the strongest, the most intelligent, even before birth.
Don Campbell proposes that the child, from the fetal stage, be musically stimulated by his mother. He only took the witness of the proposals and investigations of Alfred Tomatis, forerunner of the "effect", which he quotes profusely in his works.
It is true that by the fifth month of gestation the baby already begins to react to the sound stimuli. In this way, you will improve your growth, your intellectual, physical and emotional development and your creativity. In addition, this reinforces the emotional ties between the mother and the baby.
This beneficial effect of music (which is not exclusive to Mozart but also to other classical composers), also continues to give good results during the first five years of life.
Latest studies on the Mozart effect
The German Ministry of research through an analysis of the scientific literature related to music and intelligence, concludes that
Listening passively to Mozart's music (or any other type of music to one's liking) does not make a person more intelligent. But other studies should be done to see which music lesson could increase a child's IQ in the long term.
Kenneth Steele's team in 1999 reproduced the central experiment of Rauscher and Shaw and despite following the directives to the letter they did not achieve the supposed increase reported by the "discoverers" of the effect.
Another researcher, Chistopher Chabris, performed a meta-analysis reproduced by "Nature" in 1999 with similar negative results. That year Chabris undertook an investigation of the results of 16 studies on the Mozart effect. He concluded that the action of music on the mood would give a neurophysiological explanation to the increase of skill in space-time tasks, without a stimulus of higher functions at any time.
On that date Chabris showed that the benefits of listening to Mozart were achieved equally listening to a passage from a Stephen King novel, as long as the person enjoyed listening to them.
Dr. Rauscher, who promulgated the 1993 study of the ten minutes (as we saw, in certain intelligence tests a small and temporary elevation of the score was observed when listening to 10 minutes of Mozart's music), continued to insist on the effect.
After his studies with rats and with humans to whom he exposed the music of the Austrian composer against that of the German Felix Mendelssohn, the positive effect on spatio-temporal reasoning was confirmed. It didn't even seem that the fact that Mendelssonhn liked more enhanced the benefits that Mozart did.
For Rauscher, the Mozart effect continued to exist, although limited to that kind of reasoning and without any effect on intelligence or memory.
Mozart Effect versus music therapy
Regardless of the validity of the study of the ten minutes about the Mozart effect, music therapy, which we have talked about several times in relation to pregnancy, part or child health, does seem to have a beneficial effect.
Symphonic and instrumental music is used in hospital rooms, before surgical interventions, in libraries and in other environments, looking for cases, relaxation, concentration, memorization, creativity, analysis ...
It has been proven that music activates the auditory cortex and areas associated with emotion, as well as areas of the brain linked to fine motor coordination, vision and higher thinking processes.
Conclusions on the Mozart effect
As we have seen, despite the failed attempts to demonstrate the increase in cognitive ability, there was time for this Mozart effect to become popular and experienced entrepreneurs to take advantage of the reef, books, or books. Baby music CDs, Baby Mozart.
In the United States, public budgets were allocated for each newborn to have their classical music CD (specifically, in Georgia). The same authors of the studies that assured in 1993 that the intelligence of those who listened to Mozart increased, thought that it would be better to allocate that money to music education programs.
I do not doubt the benefits of listening to classical music (from Mozart or any other composer we like), although I find it hard to believe that it makes us smarter. Another thing is to get "clear our minds" thanks to the relaxing effect it can produce.
With regard to babies, early stimulation through classical music will not create non-existent potentials, or force the pace of learning, but it could help to recognize and boost the potential in each boy or girl. Stimulate babies, whether auditory or visual, tactile ... can enhance their motor skills, coordination, language and socialization.
I'm not saying anything new either. We have already echoed here of some study that pointed out that listening to Mozart (or Baby Einstein) does not make babies more intelligent, and also of another that said that for certain cognitive performances listening to words is better than listening to music.
But, as I say, what I do think is that we can take advantage that babies have an ear for classical music, and take advantage of it, along with many other stimuli, for their physical, intellectual and emotional growth.
We know that leaving your development in the hands of a CD, some cartoons or a specific method makes no sense, no matter how much they talked to us aboutthe Mozart effect to make babies smarter.
