Subjects: Psychology >> Cognitive Psychology submitted time 2023-07-04
Abstract： Since the last century, empirical literature on Mozart effect has been growing rapidly. However, some findings seemed hard to be replicated, resulting in an abundance of inconsistent results. In order to determine whether the classical music promote peoples’ cognitive performance, find out the reasons for heterogeneity in the results of previous studies on Mozart effect, and to explore how does classic music work, we conducted a meta-analysis basing on a systematic and comprehensive review of the published studies on the effect of classical music. Chinese and English studies from 1993 to 2022 were searched, 91 studies (a total of 172 independent effect sizes, 7159 participants) were included with the criteria of the meta-analysis. Considering that the effect size would be affected by the participants’ characteristics (e.g., age, gender, culture context), the random-effects model was conducted. After coding the data, “metafor” (version 3.4.0) for R software was used to evaluate the total effect size of classical music, and to analyze the moderating effect.
The results showed that classical music improved cognitive task performance with a small to medium effect (g = 0.36). Additionally, the moderation analyses revealed that the strength of the relationship was moderated by cultural context, type of experimental design, and dominant hemisphere of the brain. Moreover, gender interacted with age group, cognitive task and cerebral hemisphere. The direct priming hypothesis is more robustly supported by this meta-analysis. Future studies are encouraged to further clarify the regulatory variables of Mozart's effect, so as to help people more rationally and comprehensively understand the effect of classical music, which may guide us the music education.
Peer Review Status:
Awaiting Review
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