The Role Of Music And Spatial Task Performance - 1395 Words

The study that will be replicated is the study done by Nantais and Schellenberg (1999), which was a follow-up study for Rauscher’s experiment (1993, 1995), who’s aim was to conduct a study in which to test whether music and spatial task performance are casually related. The aim of Nantais and Schellenberg’s study was to replicate and extend the basic findings of Rauscher et al which were that participants who listened to Mozart before taking a spatial ability test did better than those who sat in silence, also known as the Mozart effect. Nantais and Schellenberg expected that the performance on a spatial-temporal task was better after participants listened to a piece composed by Mozart or by Schubert than after the participants sat in†¦show more content†¦As predicted, the overall levels of performance were higher in the participants’ preferred condition. This is also known as the participants’ preferred stimulus. The major modification mad e between this study and Rauscher’s study is that instead of having the participants listen to Mozart and then sit in silence, Nantais and Schellenberg had the participants listen to Mozart and then a short story. In relation to Rauscher et al. and Nantais Schellenberg, the researcher’s aim of this experiment is to investigate the impact of acoustic environmental stimuli on performance of visual spatial tasks. In order to test this, we will have participants first listen to a section of Mozart music followed by a spatial ability test and then we’ll have the participants listen to a short story also followed by a spatial ability test. The independent variable in this experiment are the Mozart and short story conditions. The dependent variable was the results of the spatial ability test for each condition. The independent variable for this experiment is the acoustic environmental stimuli. The acoustic environmental stimuli were the Mozart or the short story conditions. The Mozart piece used in this experiment was Mozart’s Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major K. 448. The short story used was â€Å"You Are Getting Sleepy† by Gleynn Washington. The type