teach1st
08-14-2005, 06:28 AM
http://www.swissinfo.org/sen/swissinfo.html?siteSect=107&sid=6004909&cKey=1124001916000
The so-called "Mozart effect" was announced in the prestigious scientific journal Nature in 1993. Two researchers at the University of California had run tests on students, making them listen to a Mozart sonata for ten minutes to see if it would have an effect on intelligence.
The two scientists said the classical music had enhanced listeners' minds, although nobody since has been able to reproduce their results. Other researchers showed in 1999 there was in fact no justification for the Mozart effect.
But the original Nature article had grabbed people's attention.
Despite the fact that the tests had been run only on university students, it soon became widely accepted that listening to classical music would make teenagers, small children and babies more intelligent.
Adrian Bangerter, a professor at Neuchâtel University who worked with Chip Heath at Stanford, wanted to understand how this idea became widespread in the United States.
Their findings show that people became interested in the effect in an attempt to quell fears about failing education systems.
"American parents and educators are constantly preoccupied with children's intellectual development, far more than Europeans," Bangerter told swissinfo. "If the school system is bad, people are for example more interested in something like the Mozart effect."
To back up this claim, Bangerter and Heath studied 500 US media reports between 1993 and 2002 to see how classical music became a must for children, and considered in which states the articles were published.
Read more (http://www.swissinfo.org/sen/swissinfo.html?siteSect=107&sid=6004909&cKey=1124001916000)
The so-called "Mozart effect" was announced in the prestigious scientific journal Nature in 1993. Two researchers at the University of California had run tests on students, making them listen to a Mozart sonata for ten minutes to see if it would have an effect on intelligence.
The two scientists said the classical music had enhanced listeners' minds, although nobody since has been able to reproduce their results. Other researchers showed in 1999 there was in fact no justification for the Mozart effect.
But the original Nature article had grabbed people's attention.
Despite the fact that the tests had been run only on university students, it soon became widely accepted that listening to classical music would make teenagers, small children and babies more intelligent.
Adrian Bangerter, a professor at Neuchâtel University who worked with Chip Heath at Stanford, wanted to understand how this idea became widespread in the United States.
Their findings show that people became interested in the effect in an attempt to quell fears about failing education systems.
"American parents and educators are constantly preoccupied with children's intellectual development, far more than Europeans," Bangerter told swissinfo. "If the school system is bad, people are for example more interested in something like the Mozart effect."
To back up this claim, Bangerter and Heath studied 500 US media reports between 1993 and 2002 to see how classical music became a must for children, and considered in which states the articles were published.
Read more (http://www.swissinfo.org/sen/swissinfo.html?siteSect=107&sid=6004909&cKey=1124001916000)