Music Therapy and Its Effects
Music Therapy and its effects.1
A powerful force that is commonly taken for granted, music can be consciously used to serve many purposes. Such purposes include motivation or reward, a means of reducing boredom and even manage time, by setting a desired pace for the listener
(Ortiz, 1999, p. Introduction xv). Considering the breadth of such a subject, it is essential to contain the contents of this essay into a focused discussion. Namely, music, its use in therapy and the effects it generates. This essay will also discuss the different arguments for the support of various therapeutic effects of music, along with its detractors.
In recent decades, an enormous amount of research has been conducted on specific ways in which sound, rhythm and music, in general, can improve human lives.
Arguably, one of the most interesting of them all is the “Mozart Effect”.2 Supporters of this ‘phenomenon’ claim that listening to Mozart’s music can affect you positively in a number of ways. Mainly, it improves one’s spatial-temporal reasoning skills and that early childhood exposure is beneficial for mental development. Let us take a closer look.
Spatial-temporal reasoning skills refer to the ability to visualize spatial patterns and mentally manipulate them over a time-ordered sequence of spatial transformations.
This ability, often referred to as "thinking in pictures", is important for generating and conceptualizing solutions to multi-step problems that arise in areas such as art, science, mathematics and everyday life (Spatial-temporal reasoning, 2006, para. 1). In his foreword for Don Campbell’s The Mozart Effect for Children, child development expert, Joseph C. Pearce, mentioned that when the Nobel laureate – and neuroscientist
– David Hubel was asked whether he had any interest other than his specialty, his reply was, “Actually, I seem to have spent an inordinate amount of my life at the piano.”. It was also stated that in the 1940s, atomic scientists
A powerful force that is commonly taken for granted, music can be consciously used to serve many purposes. Such purposes include motivation or reward, a means of reducing boredom and even manage time, by setting a desired pace for the listener
(Ortiz, 1999, p. Introduction xv). Considering the breadth of such a subject, it is essential to contain the contents of this essay into a focused discussion. Namely, music, its use in therapy and the effects it generates. This essay will also discuss the different arguments for the support of various therapeutic effects of music, along with its detractors.
In recent decades, an enormous amount of research has been conducted on specific ways in which sound, rhythm and music, in general, can improve human lives.
Arguably, one of the most interesting of them all is the “Mozart Effect”.2 Supporters of this ‘phenomenon’ claim that listening to Mozart’s music can affect you positively in a number of ways. Mainly, it improves one’s spatial-temporal reasoning skills and that early childhood exposure is beneficial for mental development. Let us take a closer look.
Spatial-temporal reasoning skills refer to the ability to visualize spatial patterns and mentally manipulate them over a time-ordered sequence of spatial transformations.
This ability, often referred to as "thinking in pictures", is important for generating and conceptualizing solutions to multi-step problems that arise in areas such as art, science, mathematics and everyday life (Spatial-temporal reasoning, 2006, para. 1). In his foreword for Don Campbell’s The Mozart Effect for Children, child development expert, Joseph C. Pearce, mentioned that when the Nobel laureate – and neuroscientist
– David Hubel was asked whether he had any interest other than his specialty, his reply was, “Actually, I seem to have spent an inordinate amount of my life at the piano.”. It was also stated that in the 1940s, atomic scientists