Does listening to Mozart Affect Spatial IQ?
In a previous well publicized experiment published in 1993, Rauscher and colleagues, of the University of California Irvine, reported that listening to Mozart (compared to relaxation instructions or silence) produced a brief but significant increase in performance of a spatial IQ task (involving mental manipulations of folded cut paper) in college students (Nature, 1993, 365, 611). This has drawn sufficient interest to produce at least one attempt at replication. In 1994, Stough and colleagues, of the University of Aukland, examined the effects of listening to Mozart, popular dance music or silence on a related test of intelligence (Personal. & Individ. Diffs., 1994, 17, 695). They found no effects. Thus, it would appear that the original report of Rauscher et al was in error. However, recently, Rauscher et al have replicated and extended their findings (Neurosci. Letters, 1995, 185, 44-47). In this study, they used the same task as in their first experiment but extended the types of l
