They have named this theory the Mozart Effect. The Mozart Effect is a theory that listening to classical music while doing a task will make you smarter. This theory was brought up in the early 1990's. Many parents that have heard of this had their infants listening to Mozart from the day they were born because it is believed to make them smarter. Perhaps this is true, Dr. Lozanov's taught 1000 words of a foreign language in a day while using the Mozart Effect and the students had over ninety-two percent retention of the material(Campbell). This retention level of the information is significantly improved to where Dr. Lozanov has taught a whole language in thirty days and his students retained almost one hundred percent of the language over four years later(Campbell). Dr. Klemm explains that the reason why music increases retention of the information even though it is an extraneous stimulus that would normally prevent memory consolidation(Klemm). Listening to music causes the release of dopamine in the brain, which improves the overall state of the brain and prevents memory consolidation(Klemm). Retention is a key part in human cognition because without retaining the information, it would be useless to learn about …show more content…
Listening to music allows people to achieve this by increasing the retention of the material, the speed of learning the material and by increasing test scores significantly. Retention is increased through the release of dopamine, that prevents memory consolidation, which is caused by listening to music(Klemm). Retention increases at such a high rate while listening to music compared to without it. People are able to learn the information so much quicker because listening to music activates both the left and right sides of the brain, which results in maximum learning of the information at hand(Campbell). Test scores increase significantly when listening to music during both study sessions and while taking the test because it is a combination of maximum retention rates and learning the material quicker. Many students strive to increase test scores and now they have a way that has been proven to work called the Mozart Effect. The only reason that the Mozart Effect works is because it increases human cognition. The music that Americans listen to have now shown that it can help increase cognition and increase the amount of knowledge retained when paired with studying and learning the material. Now it has been proven that not all the music we listen to is a distraction, but can actually overall improve the human cognition