单选题
The popular idea that classical music can improve your maths is falling from favor. New experiments have failed to support the widely publicized finding that Mozart's music promotes mathematical thinking. Researchers reported six years ago that listening to Mozart brings about short-term improvements in spatial-temporal reasoning, the type of thinking used in maths. Gordon Shaw of the University of California at Irvine and Frances Rauscher of the University of Wisconsin in Oshkosh had asked students to perform spatial tasks such as imagining how a piece of paper would look if it were folded and cut in a certain pattern. Some of the students then listened to a Mozart sonata and took the test again. The performance of the Mozart group improved. Shaw found. He reasoned that listening to Mozart increases the number of connections between neurons. But Kenneth Steele of Appalachian State University in North Carolina learnt that other studies failed to find this effect. He decided to repeat one of Shaw's experiments to see for himself. Steele divided 125 students into three groups and tested their abilities to work out how paper would look if cut and folded. One group listened to Mozart another listened to a piece by Philip Glass and the third did not listen to anything. Then the students took the test again. No group showed any statistically significant improvement in their abilities. Steele concludes that the Mozart effect doesn't exist. "It's about as unproven and as unsupported as you can get," he says. Shaw however defends his study. One reason he gives is that people who perform poorly in the initial test get the greatest boost from Mozart but Steele didn't separate his students into groups based on ability. "We're still at the stage where it needs to be examined," Shaw says. "I suspect that the more we understand the neurobiology, the more we'll be able to design tests that give a robust effect. "