Does Listening to Music Improve Your Focus?
While tackling a work assignment or school homework, do you concentrate more if there is music in the background? A neurologist considers the ‘Mozart Effect.’
A study published in the journal Nature in 1993 showed that listening to specific music can affect spatial task performance, though the reasons remain unclear. The theory was called the Mozart Effect because the researchers used Mozart’s Sonata for Two Pianos in D major in their study, which involved 36 students. Several follow-up studies have suggested that Mozart’s music may have a small, positive short-term effect on the ability to draw conclusions about objects from limited visual clues.
.. The problem, Dr. Pantelyat says, is that the Mozart Effect hasn’t been shown to have clear benefits beyond the 10 to 15 minutes during which subjects in studies were engaged in tasks.