Improvement of Concentration of Numeracy by Mozart Effect

It is commonly believed that task performance is improved by listening to Mozart's music. Although this so-called Mozart effect is not often discussed in scientific literatures, those psychological experiments that have addressed it tend to confirm its existence. In recent study, students who solved a simple visual task while listening to Mozart's music displayed more coherent brain activity. The goal of the present study is to investigate the influence of different types of music on task performance - as measured by error rate and reaction time on a bank of arithmetic questions - and on brain activity as measured with electroencephalography (EEG). Each musical segment is divided across high- and low-frequencies, so as to test the hypothesis that the observed performance enhancements are driven by a particular frequency range. In particular, eight minutes of Mozart's KV.216 (1st mov.) was segmented into high- and low-frequency ranges according to multiple division models. In general, we hypothesized that music would positively influence task performance during a learning phase, when participants become familiarized with the task, and during a subsequent test phase. We also predicted that this benefit would be further reflected in the EEG patterns. Finally, we expected brain activity patterns during the test phase to be similar to those observed in high performing individuals.