Does Music Predictability Improve Spatial-Temporal Reasoning?

In 1993, it was found that Mozart’s music temporarily enhanced performance on spatialtemporal reasoning tasks. This effect later became termed the Mozart Effect. Since then, the mechanisms of the Mozart Effect have been hotly debated among the scientific community. Recent research has called for studying the Mozart Effect by analyzing music as a series of components. The present study took the components of music into account by testing if predictable music could enhance spatial-temporal reasoning compared to non-predictable music. Participants were administered a task designed to test spatial-temporal reasoning after listening to either predictable or non-predictable music. Additionally, as a control condition, they performed the same task after listening to a short story. Listening to music did not affect reasoning performance, regardless of the predictability of the music. The results indicate that predictability in music alone may not be a major element of the Mozart Effect

What Made Him a Hero

Of all the dragons, temptations and trials that a hero must face on his perilous path through life, none has become more challenging than the encounter with a biographer. So it is a relief to travel between the hard covers of a biography of a modern American hero and return from the journey with the hero and the ideals that inspired him, and us, still intact. Edward R. Murrow is a man whose name has become a synonym for quality, courage and integrity in broadcast journalism and whose life was the enactment, and in some ways the fulfillment, of the broadcast journalist's dream. If one is curious to find out what makes some people stand out above the rest, what makes a person a hero, the story is in "Edward R. Murrow: An American Original." Murrow had talent, drive, intelligence, personality and vision. Add to those qualities the power of his good looks - that piercing gaze, those heavy, furrowed brows and that voice that seemed to resound from some inner sanctum. In sum, he added up to more than most of us

The Missing Beat: Ideas

An idea has swept across the pages of recent news reports, and what an enriching addition to the daily fare of facts and opinion. The idea comes from Francis Fukuyama, a State Department official, in an essay called "The End of History?" It was published in the National Interest last summer, and it holds that the great ideological war of this century, the war of ideas between communism and democracy, has been won by Western liberal democracy. Therefore, he writes, history, as Hegel defined it, is over

"From Here to Here"

These are the Inaugural Day Remarks given by Joan Konner, former Dean of the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, at Columbia University on September 6, 1988, her first day as dean. This speech was then published in Vital Speeches of the Day (55:8) on February 1, 1989

American Citizen or Internal Enemy: Reasons Behind the Creation of the Japenese-American Interment Camps

While the bombings of Pearl Harbor were a factor leading to the creation of the Japanese-American Internment Camps, it was not the sole factor in the creation of these camps. More importantly Japanese-American internment camps were a continuation of the social relations the American public had towards this group

“Partial View: Truth in Documentary Filmmaking”

This is a speech by Joan Konner, former Dean of the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, given in Riga, Latvia, in September 1990, at the Robert Flaherty Film Festival. She discusses the concept of truth in making documentaries

Concluding Remarks

How do you bring a rodeo to an end? It's my assignment today to get my arms around what we heard—and, yes, that's a pun on making love—and to help you get your arms around it, too, by doing what journalists do: connecting the dots, to try to make a coherent whole out of different presentations and perspectives on love and its obstacles. Part of what I heard, however, was how difficult it is to get your arms around even one person, a mother or child, a partner or mate, much less somebody Other in the world. Love is a subject that encompasses so many different worlds of knowledge, thought, and ideas. Every time I heard the word today it seemed a hyperlink to some experience, some memory, some feeling, something I knew or needed to know more about. If it was like that for you—and I expect that it was—then what we really should do is be quiet for a few minutes to allow you to concentrate, and then let you speak from your own hearts and your own experiences of love