Chapter 11, Problem 47E

Mozart Will listening to a Mozart piano sonata make you smarter? In a study published in the journal Psychological Science, Rauscher, Shaw, and Ky reported that when students were given a spatial reasoning section of a standard IQ test, those who listened to Mozart for 10 minutes improved their scores more than those who simply sat quietly.

1. a) These researchers said the differences were statistically significant. Explain what that means in context.
2. b) Steele, Bass, and Crook tried to replicate the original study. In their study, also published in Psychological Science, the subjects were 125 college students who participated in the experiment for course credit. Subjects first took the test. Then they were assigned to one of three groups: listening to a Mozart piano sonata, listening to music by Philip Glass, and sitting for 10 minutes in silence. Three days after the treatments, they were retested. Draw a diagram displaying the design of this experiment.
3. c) These boxplots show the differences in score before and after treatment for the three groups. Did the Mozart group show improvement?
4. d) Do you think the results prove that listening to Mozart is beneficial? Explain.