Dougan, Faculty Advisor, James D.

Huber, Elizabeth

Digital Commons @ Illinois Wesleyan University

Illinois Wesleyan UniversityDigital Commons @ IWUJohn Wesley Powell Student ResearchConference 2000, 11th Annual JWP ConferenceApr 15th, 10:00 AM - 11:00 AMThe Mozart Effect: Can Rats Discriminate betweenClassical and Modern Music?Elizabeth HuberIllinois Wesleyan UniversityJames D. Dougan, Faculty AdvisorIllinois Wesleyan UniversityFollow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.iwu.edu/jwprcThis Event is brought to you for free and open access by The Ames Library, the Andrew W. Mellon Center for Curricular and FacultyDevelopment, the Office of the Provost and the Office of the President. It has been accepted for inclusion in Digital Commons @ IWU bythe faculty at Illinois Wesleyan University. For more information, please contact digitalcommons@iwu.edu.©Copyright is owned by the author of this document.Elizabeth Huber and James D. Dougan, Faculty Advisor, "The Mozart Effect: Can Rats Discriminate between Classical andModern Music?" (April 15, 2000). John Wesley Powell Student Research Conference. Paper 10.http://digitalcommons.iwu.edu/jwprc/2000/posters/10THE JOHN WESLEY POWELL STUDENT RESEARCH CONFERENCE • APRIL 2000 Poster Presentation 19 THE MOZART EFFECT: CAN RATS DISCRIMINATE BETWEEN CLASSICAL AND MODERN MUSIC? Elizabeth Huber and James D. Dougan* Department of Psychology, Illinois Wesleyan University The popular media have made much of something that they dubbed the "Mozart effect." College students who were exposed to Mozart performed spatial reasoning tasks better than students who were exposed to Philip Glass or silence. More recently, it has been suggested that exposure to Mozart also increased maze learning in rats. The present study further examined animal's response to the musical stimuli used in the Mozart experiments. Rats pressed bars for food in the presence of Mozart's "Sonata in D" or Philip Glass' "Music with Changing Parts."  Preliminary results suggest that rats respond faster during Glass. This may be the result of a generalized arousal effect. Theoretical implications are unclear at present, pending further data collection. 

The Mozart Effect: Can Rats Discriminate between Classical and Modern Music?

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The Mozart Effect: Can Rats Discriminate between Classical and Modern Music?

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