~ ~ ~
"Excerpts from MuSICA Research Notes", reproduced by permission
of the author,
Dr. Norman M. Weinberger, Director of MuSICA.
For more information, contact http://www.musica.uci.edu
~ ~ ~
"Many
of us became musicians to fill an emotional need,
not knowing the mind was benefiting too. As
more research ties the mind to health and emotional
well being, music will become both medicine
andexercise
for the mind!"
- Music Notes, Inc.
-
A particularly noteworthy finding is the total amount
of the brain that is involved in active music making,
particularly during sight reading and playing. It
seems that more of the brain is involved than in almost
any other situation, with the possible exception
of the abnormal storms of electrical activity that
sweep through the brain during an epileptic seizure.
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The devaluation of music because it involves
emotion falsely assumes that music is
not cognitive. Actually, music involves
as many or more cognitive processes than
any other school subject. For example,
playing from a score involves most if
not all cognitive processes. These include
perception of the score and of the music
produced, interpretation of images on
the page based on prior learning of an
abstract language with its own complex
syntax, continual and focused attention,
planning highly intricate movements,
adjusting this motor program to not only
match the score,s meter and rhythm but
also the ongoing tempo as indicated by
the conductor, executing the motor plan
to make an appropriate level of sound,
with appropriate phrasing, nuance and
expression, attending to the results
both aural and kinesthetic, and beginning
this continual process of problem solving
again. Where in all of this is there
mental activity less exalted or less
important for cognitive development than
in reading, riting or rithmetic? Of course,
these are important subjects, but so
is music. If one is concerned with
developing the human intellect, rather
than whether the school band wins prizes,
how can one possibly justify treating
music as a second-class subject in education?
Music
and Cognitive Achievementin Children
The
music instruction was extensive, five days a week
for 40 minutes per day, for seven months. Students
were tested on reading ability at the start of the
school year and then tested again at the end of the
year. After training the music group exhibited significantly
higher reading scores than did the control group,
scoring in the 88th percentile vs. the 72nd percentile...after
an additional year of Kodaly training, the experimental
group was still superior to the control group. These
findings clearly support the view that music education
facilitates the ability to read.
"Excerpts from
MuSICA Research Notes", reproduced by
permission of the author,
Dr. Norman M. Weinberger, Director of MuSICA.
For more information, contact http://www.musica.uci.edu
Sight-Reading Music:
A Unique Window on the Mind
Music research
affords the potential to discover new capacities and processes
of the human mind. However, music cognition and behavior
are often viewed merely as an instance of other, better known
subjects. An example is music sight-reading, often believed
to obey the laws of language reading. However, recent studies
reveal that the study of sight-reading in music provides
a unique window on the mind.
A related task
in music is sight-reading, that is reading an unknown score
while performing the music. T. W. Goolsby has pointed out
that music educators have adopted language reading as the
basis for instruction and evaluation of sight-reading. He
questions whether this is appropriate...it seems that the
mental strategy in music is to look ahead to determine where
the score is "going" (obtaining the "larger
picture"), making inferences about many of the details
of the score (given a knowledge of e.g., harmony in Western
tonal music), thus obtaining a sufficient framework within
which to look back to notes that are just ahead of the notes
being performed -- and repeating this complex process again.
All of this occurs as often as five to six times per second!
Therefore, reading music apparently is not an instance of
reading text, but a process unto itself. Consequently, music
seems to provide a unique window into the mind.
...Sight-reading
makes demands that differ, perhaps fundamentally, from
the other tasks. To be successful, mental processes
and strategies must match the special demands. That the
patterning of eye movements, which are a convenient "window
to the mind", is unique to sight-reading forces us
to enlarge the way we think about the visual encoding and
understanding of symbols, and the resultant behavior. Thus,
while having certain commonalties with other activities,
sight-reading as a part of music seems to involve a unique
combination of mental processes.
Dr. Norman M. Weinberger,
Director of MuSICA.
For more information, contact http://www.musica.uci.edu
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