Is Mozart making you smarter?

When it comes to giving out study advice, it is common to hear someone say: "you know, listening to Mozart can increase your IQ average by about a half point!" Where this piece of sage advice has come from I have no clue. The question that I would put forward is this: is it really true that one can increase one's ability to absorb and understand more information while listening to Mozart or any piece of classical music for that matter? I would suggest that it actually decreases your ability on the basis of the fact that it draws your attention away from the subject matter at hand.

Think about it this way. If one were to attend a stage production of William Shakespeare's Hamlet, then is it safe to say that one could increase one's ability to apprehend and make use of English language? Certainly the opportunity is there, but the mere coincidence of attending a Shakespearean production does not guarantee one will be thinking and writing in Shakespearean language when all is said and done. Certainly if one gave do preparation by studying the play beforehand and learning something about stage production, one could certainly benefit to a greater degree.

Now let's put this in another way. Let's grant that attending a Shakespearean production increases one's intelligence level, but could we also say that attending that same Shakespearean production while reading a different book during that production would increase one's ability to apprehend the subject matter within the book? Certainly not. It would not only be difficult to read within a dark theater, but it would also be extremely difficult to pay attention to that book while a play is going on. The same holds true for listening to classical music while studying. I would argue that without a doubt it is beneficial to listen to classical music, especially if one is given due consideration to the arrangement and performance of the music. However, listening to Mozart while trying to memorize geometric formulas or Greek participles is distracting and it gets in the way of learning. Why? Because classical music extremely interesting to listen to whether one has a good ear For it or not. The reason classical music is so detrimental to the act of reading is because it is so beautiful!

The problem is that it uplifts your mood in such a way that you feel more intelligent and to a certain extent it does help you become more intelligent, but not with the process of trying to analyze information. The reality is that classical music can be beneficial for one's thinking but it's a particular kind of thinking. Classical music assists one in the process of synthesizing information and not analyzing information. Analysis is the process of breaking apart an entire unit of information into its component parts, but synthesis is the process of putting that information together in a new or original manner. So, in other words, if you put on a Beethoven record while trying to read your physics textbook, then your brain is the one to try to start synthesizing information rather than trying to analyze information. The music will put you in a relaxed state of mind where you will be able to play with previously acquired ideas, but it will not help you acquire new ideas. You can see how listening to music while studying can be detrimental, but listening in order to relax and think can be beneficial.

Let me put forward one final argument or rather one example. In my experience, I have noticed that there are many successful teachers that habitually listen to classical music. In my opinion, there is nothing more inspiring than passing by a professor's office restore is partially closed and in which there is the gentle sound of Mozart. However, I have further noticed that many of the same professors are not actually reading or studying at the same time. Very often they are cleaning their office for organizing the books! I've also noticed a negative example. When surveying a library, which I regularly study yet, I have noticed handfuls of graduate – yes, not college but graduate – students sitting at their desks with their books clutched in hand an iPods at their side piping in music directly to their ears! Now, I could partially by the argument that they were simply trying to block out the noise, if perhaps they were sitting in the middle the Starbucks, but they weren't. Anyway, you don't have to take my word for it. Just try for yourself. Try to study one hour with music in the background – pick your poison – and then try to see how much you can remember by writing down everything important you try to study on a piece of paper. And then taking another block of time and study without music, and then try to see how much you can remember by writing down everything important on each paper. And then compare the difference – chances are, you'll probably be able to write down more information from the time without music than with.

Remembering Bad Study Habits

Recently I happened upon a discussion among some fellow students of mine concerning the problem of reading and retaining practical knowledge. The discussion arose in the classroom when the professor was absent. (He had momentarily stepped out in order to give us the time freedom to fill out our student evaluations of him). We all finished our student evaluations rather quickly and the professor had not yet returned. Immediately, some of the students began to discuss the question of whether or not they had satisfactorily passed the reading quiz given at the beginning of the class. One student very openly and frankly confessed that he was only confident about one of the five answers that he had given. The problem, he explained, was that he would read material for the class, understand the practical principles with relative ease, but would not be able to regurgitate those principles for the quiz. Without commenting further concerning the progress of this conversation, let me pose this question: what makes the reading of practical books easy-to-understand, but difficult to retain?

I would suggest that many practical books (i.e. any book that contains information that suggests some type of procedure for implementation) are relatively easy to understand because most practical books appeal to principles we already know and use. In other words, practical principles are not the thing that we are learning; rather what we are learning is the specific application of those principles. In other words, when you are reading a cookbook, you are not learning how to cook in general rather you are learning how to cook something. Part of the difficulty is simply remembering the specifics.

There is another edit difficulty, which has to do with the systemization of practical knowledge. Most practical books layout and logical and explicit sequence of instructions whereas most of the time people tend to operate at an intuitive unstated level. Think about it this way: when you are driving down the road, are you mentally rifling through the various rules of the road that you have to learn as a 15-year-old? No. You may do so on occasion when discussing some type of ambiguity trafficking such as a four way stop or blinking traffic light. However, most of the time you operate more or less automatically without conscious thought. When you learn something new, you have to do so in an explicit conscious level. In other words, acquiring a new skill does not feel the same as doing that skill. In order to learn that skill, you must first learn the stated explicit logical sequence before it can become automatic knowledge.

As it turned out with my classmates, I found out that what they were failing to do was simply taking notes from the book, condensing those notes, and attempting to memorize those notes. You see, for them when they read the textbooks, they clearly understood the practical advice that was being given and the assumed that immediate understanding was the full extent of the task. However, this is only part of the task. Immediate understanding must be accompanied with intent on memorization. If one fails to attempt to retain the systematic framework of practical knowledge, then one is either simply lazy, or one assumes they are not learning anything new, or that they are right disagree. Immediate understanding could simply just indicate that they just understood the part but not the whole, which seems very likely in this case.

I say these things not to condemn my fellow classmates, but out of embarrassment from my own academic past. I can remember some of my teachers saying things like: "I'm not concerned that you memorize all the details, rather I want you to understand." I'm almost positive that the intent of my teachers was not to belittle the idea memorization but it was simply to stress the idea of understanding as the goal of reading. However, I interpreted the statements to mean – don't worry about memorizing anything just retain the big picture. What I have been learning since being in graduate school is that there must be a healthy combination of big picture understanding and memorization of detail. If one does not commit the details memory, then one risks actually having an inaccurate big picture. So, as an aspiring professor myself, I plan on telling my students, “I'm not concerned that you memorize details or understand the big picture, rather I am concerned that you memorize the details that support and informed the big picture!”