The Mozart Effect and primary school children

Abstract

This study found some evidence for the existence of a Mozart Effect with upper-primary school-aged children in a school setting. Scores on a Paper Folding Task (PFT) for a class which listened to Mozart during testing were significantly higher than the PFT scores of a control class. Moreover, a similar result was obtained for another class which listened to Bach during testing. The musical educational experience of the children, ascertained by a Musical Background Questionnaire, did not significantly contribute to the variance in PFT scores. We believe that this study is the first to find a Mozart Effect for school children in a natural setting, in contrast to the original study of Rauscher, Shaw and Ky (1993) who examined the effects of listening to Mozart on the spatial task performance of university students in a laboratory.