The term “Mozart Effect” refers to the suggestion that listening to Mozart’s music can induce short term improvements in the performance of a type of mental task known as spatial-temporal reasoning.

Great. Now what is the benefit in even a temporary improvement in spatial-temporal reasoning (with or without a Mozart-related trigger), and why is it relevant to a site offering products targeting prenatal and early childhood learning? Spatial-temporal reasoning is defined as “Spatial-temporal reasoning is the ability to visualize spatial patterns and mentally manipulate them over a time-ordered sequence of spatial transformations.” Got it? A common extension of the first paragraph above is that exposing your child, or even your baby while still in the womb to Mozart will have a positive effect on that child’s mental / cognitive development… basically suggesting that exposure to Mozart may ‘make your child smarter.” This last bit regarding general intelligence is somewhat problematic as we will see below.

How Does One Take Advantage Of This Potential
The basic concept is a fairly simple one, in order to leverage the Mozart effect expose your child to appropriate music at appropriate levels while in the womb and once they are born. Babies, infants, children. There are numerous options for music intended to deliver the Mozart effect specifically or early childhood learning generally. Additionally there are products on the market designed to make the playing of music to your baby simple, comfortable and safe perhaps the most impressive of which is the Nuvo Ritmo which not only makes music delivery comfortable, but does so in a safe manner by controlling the volume delivered to your baby.

Is There Documentation To Prove / Disprove This Theory?
Much of this can be traced back to the results of a study published in Nature in the early 1990s that looked at the effect of listening to Mozart on spatial reasoning. The study found that the subjects exposed to Mozart performed better on a spatial reasoning test after that exposure than did two control groups. It should be noted that the study suggested that the benefit was not long term and did not directly suggest improvement in IQ. That said, an improvement was observed and this spurred interest from many groups.