An investigation into the Mozart Effect.

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Psychology Unit 3 - Coursework

An investigation into the Mozart Effect

Introduction

Background research

Modern technology is increasing at an amazing rate, everyone is trying to keep up and have cutting edge equipment. This is very much important in school systems as well as other areas of life. With technology now being such a dominant factor in classrooms, teachers are doing all they can to incorporate technology into their teaching. This includes playing music during tests. Teachers may see this as a way to relax students and reduce anxiety, thus helping their test performance.

There is research however, that states to achieve maximal scores on a test, studying should be done with the same cues present as during testing. For example, if the student listened to Mozart's 5th concerto whilst studying, he may recall the facts better during the exam if the same piece of music is played. According to the encoding specificity principle of memory, (Thompson & Tulving, 1970) the most effective retrieval cues at the time of recall are cues that contain information that was processed at the time the "to be remembered material" was studied. Therefore, for the music