Causal Relationship between Music and Spatial Task Performance

Article summary

The purpose of the study is to determine whether or not there exists a causal relationship between music and spatial task performance. The research process has been fueled by a gap in previous studies on the same topic that making it necessary to have a further analysis of the topic. Music is an integral part of the human beings from their childhood and the research process is concerned with the relationship between music and other forms of human intelligence. The fact that there is scanty evidence on correlations between music cognition and spatial reasoning makes it necessary to conduct this research. The topic of is quite interesting considering the fact that not many people have had the chance to explore the role of music to the cognitive functions of humans. It is worth understanding that music is prevalent in every aspect of human life irrespective of their ages or gender thus necessitating an extensive study on the topic.

Every research process is guided by a hypothesis which is a statement that is proved after the research process. In this case, the hypothesis of the study is ‘’ Music which is universally appreciated from birth, can be used to develop inherent firing patterns, along with associated behaviors which are relevant to spatial reasoning.  In essence, the researcher intends to prove that there is some sort of relationship between listening music and spatial reasoning amongst persons. The hypothesis wants to expand on previous studies which have indicated that listening to music can lead to short term spatial facilitation. In essence, the researcher propagates that listening to music will certainly lead to spatial facilitation even to the young children whose cortex is not yet mature. Positive results would prove that there is great relationship between music and other human neurons.

To prove the hypothesis, the research process adopted use of primary data based on previous studies. The research process intends to collect data from college students and record the effect on them when listening to a Mozart. The college students will also be subjected to highly repetitive music and record on the effect to spatial reasoning. Besides using the college students, the research process will also involve infants whose cortex is not yet mature. This is based on the premises that the young ones provide a long term enhancement to nonverbal cognitive abilities as compared to the grown up college students. Use of Stanford-Binet intelligence scale was also embraced in the study to determine the spatial reasoning of different university students after participating in the listening to Mozart and also to a control group that was silent. The different memory levels between the two groups were compared to prove whether there is any relationship between listening to music and spatial reasoning.

The research process got varied results. For instance, it was evident that there was a relationship between music and spatial reasoning as evidenced by the results from the silent vs Mozart group. It is evident that the spatial reasoning of Mozart group improved after every day they encounter with Mozart Sonata. Also, the control results where there were silence, mixed and Mozart group, it was evident that the Mozart group enhanced spatial reasoning as opposed to others.  As the number of days of listening to Mozart increased, the cognitive ability of the respondents increased significantly. The study also proved that minimalist or rhythmically repetitive musical structures do not enhance spatial task performance. The results of the research have also confirmed that early music training enhances spatial task performance as shown by the results from the three year old children. In essence, the results of the research process have proved the hypothesis of the study.

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