The Effects of Mozart Music and Silence on a Person’s Performance on Spatial Tasks

Yvonne Ramos #617357

Psychology

03/04/11

Word count: 1460

Abstract: Previously done investigations suggests that listening to Mozart's music enhances
performance on mathematical and spatial-reasoning tasks. The Mozart Effect claims that
listening to Mozart music results in a slight improvement in spatiotemporal performance. The
main aim of this psychological experiment is to capture the effects that relaxing classical music
have on human performance, also known as the Mozart effect. Following the method used by
Rauscher 1993, the Wilson and Brown experiment was replicated, which tests the effects of
Mozart music on a person’s performance on spatial tasks; such as completing a series of mazes.
Rauscher’s experiment showed that participants performed better after listening to Mozart. This
effect has been “attributed to a priming-like activation of organized neural pathways that are
assumed to underlie the structures of both the complex, patterned music of Mozart and certain
spatial tasks” (Brown 1997). Wilson and Brown (1997) demonstrate that performance on maze
tasks is also facilitated by listening to Mozart because of the spatial-temporal nature of mazes. In
this experiment, the spatial reasoning of 31 students attending Valley High School in Las Vegas,
NV, who had listened to a five minute session of Mozart’s music was examined under controlled
experimental conditions by examining the performance on a timed maze completion task in a
Mozart condition versus a silence condition. Each participant performed a pencil-and-paper maze
task after a ten minute presentation of two listening conditions: silence and a piano concerto by
Mozart. The mazes varied in complexity of solution as well as the size. What the results showed
was that, there were fewer errors in the mazes under the Mozart condition as opposed to a silence
condition. Also, almost 5% more mazes were completed under the Mozart condition than the
silent condition. This suggests that Mozart music did effect performance. In conclusion, this
experiment proved that Mozart did indeed enhance spatial task performance on mazes.
Introduction: The main aim of this psychological experiment is to capture the effects that
relaxing classical music have on human spatial task performance by completing mazes. Wilson
and Brown (1997) demonstrate that performance on maze tasks is also facilitated by listening to
Mozart because of the spatial-temporal nature of mazes.
Design: Following the method used by Rauscher 1993, the Wilson and Brown experiment was
replicated in this experiment, which tests the effects of Mozart music on a person’s performance
on spatial tasks such as completing a series of mazes. Rauscher’s experiment showed that
participants performed better after listening to Mozart. In this experiment both the listening
conditions and the maze complexity were within-subject. The participants were randomly
assigned to one of two presentation orders for the listening conditions. This was done in order to
make sure the presentation order did not alter the results or performance. The two types of
listening conditions, difficulty of the mazes, presentation order, and the 10 minute time
allocation in which the participants were placed served as the independent. Our dependent
variables were the accuracy of the maze, the completion of each maze, and the observable time
in which a person finished. In order to obtain non bias results, the participants did not receive too
much information about the experiment and all questions about the experiment were not
answered until the experiment was completed. Due to ethical guidelines, prior to participating in
the experiment, each individual was given a consent form describing briefly the nature of the
experiment. The participants were clearly told that the experiment was voluntary and had the
right to withdraw from it. No harm or stress was applied to the participants. Also, participant
anonymity was protected and they were told their data and information would remain
confidential and unidentifiable.

Participants: Thirty-one Valley High School students, located in Las Vegas NV,
volunteered to participate in this experiment. These participants ranged from ages 14 to 18 years,
13 of which are male and 18 are female. Valley High School is both a magnet school and a zoned
school. Thus, students may attend one of two magnet programs: Hospitality and Tourism and
International Baccalaureate, as well as regular zoned school. In order to get a more broad and
diverse range of participants, students belonging in all three groups were included in our sample,
allowing us to have a good sample representation. Of the 31 participants, 14 are in the
international baccalaureate program, 6 are in the hospitality and tourism program, and 11 are
zoned students. Also, the grade levels of each participant were recorded in order to have a good
representation of high school students as well as avoid our results from being skewed due to
grade level or level of knowledge. Out of all the participants, 10 are freshman, 10 are
sophomores, 5 are juniors, and 6 are seniors. These students were recruited by passing around a
signup sheets and making announcements in 5 different classes: a History of the Beatles course,
French Club, a French II class, as well as two English classes. The combination ensured a well
suited sample size and diversity in grade level, age, magnet program, and gender. Lastly, the
participants received no compensation for their participation and were voluntary.

Materials: This experiment consists of two listening conditions that will be conducted
for a 10 min period of time: Mozart’s piano concerto no. 23 in A major K488, and silence.
Mozart’s piano concerto serves as a “musical stimulus that meets the criteria of complexity and
patterning” (Brown 1993). A CD was prepared, on which the listening conditions were
presented in different orders. The piano concerto was played through a classroom surround
system. The participants were given a paper-and-pencil maze spatial task; which required them
to complete six pencil and paper mazes each equally divided into three different categories: easy,
medium, and hard. The difficulty level standards differ in complexity and size and were taken
from a website1. Each participant was provided two sets of three mazes varying in complexity
and size. Along with the mazes, each participant was provided a Bic papermate ball point pen for
more reliable measures of path errors and path recursions. Two of the mazes were very simple in
structure, two were more complex in that they were somewhat longer solution paths and more
alternative path choices than the simple mazes had, and the remaining set were the most complex
in terms of alternative path choices, the solution paths took the greatest number of turns, and
size.

Procedure: Participants were randomly assigned to one of two presentation orders for the
listening conditions. Thus, the classical music condition was presented first for some participants
and second for others. Prior to participating in the experiment, each individual was given a
consent form describing briefly the nature of the experiment. In order to participate in the
experiment, each individual had to return their consent form signed. The participants were
clearly told that the experiment was voluntary and had the right to withdraw from it. The
participants were placed into a medium size group of about 15-20 participants. The experiment
began with the same instructions for both groups: to "work as quickly as possible, do not talk to
each other, and be precise." In order to obtain non bias results, the participants did not receive
too much information about the experiment and all questions about the experiment study were
not answered until the experiment was completed. Two small packets of three randomly
distributed mazes lay face down on the desk in front of each person. After the instructions were
given, the first listening condition was presented for 10 min. After the listening period, the
participants began work on the first of the sets of mazes, one from each level of complexity and
were given 10 min to finish using Bic papermate ball point pens because they led to more

1 http://www.kidprintables.com/puzzles/mazes/
reliable measures of path errors and path recursions. They were instructed not to pick up the pen
from the paper until they had reached the goal. The same procedure was used for the second
condition. After the second 10-min maze completion period, the experimental session ended. We
focused on four measures of maze performance to measure the participants' spatial reasoning.
First, we counted the number of mazes completed within each condition as an overall measure of
performance. A second accuracy measure, number of path errors, was determined by a count for
each maze of the number of times a person took a path that led to a dead end or moved into a
region of the maze that was not part of the best solution. Also, the number of times participants
picked up their pens and broke the solution path and the number of times they had to turn back
with a recursion in their solution was evaluated.

Results:

Number of mistakes when presented with silence first (1) and Mozart second (2)

easy 1 medium 1 hard 1 easy 2 medium 2 hard 2

0 1 incomplete 0 0 1
0 1 3 0 0 3
0 0 6 0 0 1
0 0 incomplete 0 0 6
0 0 incomplete 0 0 1
incomplet
0 0 incomplete 0 0 e
incomplet
0 0 2 0 1 e
incomplet
0 2 incomplete 1 1 e
0 0 incomplete 0 0 3
0 0 5 0 0 2
0 0 4 0 0 1
0 0 3 0 0 2
0 0 0 0 0 6
incomplet
0 0 2 0 1 e
0 0 incomplete 0 0 0
0 0 6 0 0 2

When calculating the number of mistakes, there were fewer mistakes after listening to
Mozart as opposed to silence. If a maze was incomplete we counted it as 10 mistakes. After
adding each column we were able to calculate that no mistakes were made in the easy maze, 4
mistakes were made in the medium maze, and 101 mistakes were made on the hard maze under
the silence condition. Adding up to a total of 105 mistakes. During the Mozart listening
condition, 1 mistake was made in the easy maze, 3 mistakes were made in the medium maze, and
68 mistakes were made in the hard maze, giving a total of 72 mistakes. This showed that 29 less
mistakes were made when listening to Mozart, suggesting that Mozart enhanced spatial
performance.
Number of mistakes when presented with Mozart first (1) and silence second (2)

easy 1 medium 1 hard 1 easy 2 medium 2 hard 2

0 0 0 0 0 5
incomplet
0 0 4 1 1 e
incomplet
0 0 incomplete 0 0 e
incomplet
0 0 2 0 0 e
incomplet
0 1 incomplete 0 1 e
0 0 0 0 1 0
0 1 incomplete 1 0 2
0 0 2 1 2 3
incomplet
0 0 incomplete 0 1 e
0 0 incomplete 0 0 3
0 1 8 1 1 5
0 0 2 1 1 3
incomplet
0 0 incomplete 1 0 e
incomplet
0 0 1 0 2 e
0 0 4 0 0 7

The same method was applied, calculating 6 mistakes in the easy maze, 10 mistakes in
the medium maze, and 98 mistakes were made on the hard maze under the silence condition, for
a total of 114 mistakes. During the Mozart listening condition, no mistakes were made in the
easy maze, 3 mistakes were made in the medium maze, and 83 mistakes were made in the hard
maze; for a total of 86 mistakes. This shows that 28 less mistakes were made when listening to
Mozart. Suggesting that the order that the music was presented made no difference. Also, in both
groups the pattern was similar. Participants scored better after listening to Mozart music. The
hypothesis that listening to the classical music of Mozart enhances spatial-reasoning operations
received support from our data. The graphs below demonstrate this trend:

As a whole, both groups had a total of 219 mistakes were made in the silence condition
and 158 mistakes were made in the Mozart condition. The Mozart listening condition had 61 less
mistakes then the silent condition, suggesting that the Mozart effect worked. The mean number
of mistakes made during mazes within the time allotted was lower after the participants listened
to the music of Mozart (M = 5.09 mistakes per person) than the silence condition (M = 7.06
mistakes per person). This showed that participants committed fewer errors after listening to
relaxation music as opposed to silence.

The mean number of the completion of mazes within time allotted was higher after the
participants listened to Mozart music (89.2%), than the silence condition (84.9%). Showing that
participants completed 4.3% more graphs after listening to Mozart; thus, proving our hypothesis
correct.
Discussion
The results of this study demonstrate that listening to the patterned classical music of Mozart can
enhance performance of spatial tasks. The hypothesis that listening to the classical music of Mozart
enhances spatial-reasoning operations received support from our data. However, the effects Mozart
music had were small and perhaps not enough. It many only enhance spatial-task performance
under certain circumstances and not significantly. One noticeable observation was that
participants tended to finish much faster with the Mozart listening condition. Perhaps it served as
a placebo to the participants. The results obtained in the experiment follow the same trend as the
Wilson and Brown experiment. (1997). they too proved that participants performed better after
listening to Mozart. Although this experiment was performed as structured and accurate as
possible, there were some limitations. First, the experiment was conducted on a tight schedule.
Although talking was prohibited, there was whispering going on. Some students seemed to be
glancing over at other’s reactions. Due to small classroom sizes, the participants may have been
too close in proximity. A way to fix this problem was to take smaller group sizes on different
dates. Although the sample of participants were diverse, a more randomly selected method could
have been used. Also, there seemed to be some lack of effort in some individuals. Some
participants gave up once they reached the harder mazes. Also, several participants said “I suck
at mazes”, so perhaps it was the mindset that may have affected the experiment. One way to
improve this experiment can be to reduce the participants in each group. Also, timing how fast
they complete the maze may provide more in dept results and having more trials. Nevertheless,
this experiment was successful. The Mozart listening condition had 61 less mistakes then the
silent condition, suggesting that the Mozart effect worked. Also, participants completed 4.3%
more graphs after listening to Mozart than in the silence condition. In conclusion, this
experiment proved that Mozart music effects of Mozart music on a person’s performance on
spatial tasks. Because of the spatial-temporal nature of mazes, the Mozart effect was seen here
too.

Brown, L. (1997). Reexamination of the effect of Mozart’s music on

spatial-task performance. Journal of Psychology, 131(4), 365.