Does listening to Mozart's music influence visuospatial short-term memory in young adults?

Abstract

IntroductionMusic is claimed to improve mental function and many researchers claim that this effect related to Mozart's music is limited to enhancement of the spatial temporal reasoning and not to other cognitive functions.ObjectivesTo explore the influence of Mozart's music on visuospatial memory.MethodsSixty adults (37 women and 23 men), with Mage = 21.83, SDage = 2.38, Meducation = 14.03, SDeducation = .99, and without any formal musical education were examined through an experimental process. Participants in groups of ten listened to Mozart's sonata for two pianos in D major, K.448, to Mozart's violin concerto No.3 in G major, K.216, and to a no sounds condition in varying order. The participants after listening to each 10-minute condition were presented with a series of randomly generated patterns made up of black squares on a chess-like surface. This was used in order to test the storage capacity of their visuospatial memory. After 3 seconds of presentation for each drawing, they were asked to reproduce by drawing these patterns that progressively got bigger.ResultsResults revealed for all three conditions that the number of correct grid drawings made by the participants was not significantly statistically different (P > 05), and therefore their visuospatial memory retention was not influenced by any kind of music.ConclusionsFuture research could examine in more detail the retention and manipulation of visuospatial information not only in tasks similar to the visual patterns test, but also in different tests used for clinical and non-clinical populations.Disclosure of interestThe authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.