Talk:Mozart effect
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For a Janaury 2004 deletion debate over this page see Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Mozart effect
[edit] OK, I'm correcting the New York Times... on the basis of guesswork
For the record: The New York Times article I cite, "Georgia's Governor Seeks Musical Start for Babies," Kevin Sack, The New York Times, January 15, 1998 p. A12, quoting Zell Miller, actually quotes him as saying:
- "No one questions that listening to music at a very early age affects the spatial, temporal reasoning that underlies math and engineering and even chess."
"Spatial, temporal reasoning" with a comma doesn't make sense. On the other hand, researchers and popularizers frequently use the term "spatial-temporal reasoning" or "spatio-temporal reasoning" in connection with the "Mozart effect." It is so plausible that Miller said "spatial-temporal" and that it was mis-transcribed by ear as "spatial, temporal" that I'm going to make the correction. Or corruption, as the case may be.
Yeah, I know... it's a recognized principle of textual analysis that the version of a text that doesn't make sense is much more likely to be the authentic one than the version that does. Dpbsmith (talk) 02:39, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Explanation of handling of trademark issue
I've put a short disclaimer saying simply
- NOTE: any trademarks mentioned on this page belong to their owners
to acknowledge that the phrase "Mozart effect" has been trademarked. I don't use a trademark symbol within the text, because a) the phrase was coined by researchers Rauscher and Shaw, and b) I notice that most press and other references to it simply use the phrase in quotation marks. I'm uncertain of the boundaries of trademark law, but since we are not referring specifically to any of Don Campbell's products that bear that trademark, nor are we selling related or competing products ourselves, I don't think there's any need at all to use the trademark symbol. I'm not even sure there's any real need for the disclaimer.
IANAL. I do not know what I'm doing. These are the reasons why I did what I did. Dpbsmith (talk) 15:31, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)
[edit] More research
Effects of listening to Mozart and Bach on the performance of a mathematical test. Bridgett, David J.; Cuevas, Jacqueline; Perceptual and Motor Skills, Vol 90(3,Pt2), Jun 2000. pp. 1171-1175.
Abstract.Assessed the effect of listening to Mozart or Bach on the immediate performance of a 10-min mathematical test. Ss were 61 18-50 yr old undergraduates, who were randomly assigned to a control, a Mozart, or a Bach group. Ss were then administered a mathematics pretest, listened to a selection of music for 10 min, and were then administered a mathematics posttest. The test was constructed to be similar to items taken from the University Mathematics Placement Examination. Analysis indicated no significant effect on the immediate mathematics test when Ss listened to 10 min of either Mozart or Bach. These findings suggest caution in measuring differences in various cognitive tasks as indicating increases in intelligence scores.
