Music's Impact:  Birth to Preschool  -   Part 2


    taken from "Music Advocacy Action Kit," provided
    by The Selmer Company for School Reform sessions
    presented by Tim Lautzenheiser and Michael Kumer at
    the 1999 Midwest Band and Orchestra Clinic in Chicago


*  A research project conducted with three-year-olds in a Los Angeles preschool tested children's spatial reasoning after eight months of keyboard and singing lessons.   The
children who had received the music training increased their spatial-temporal reasoning by 46 percent as compared to a 6 percent increase in the control group that received no training.

- Frances Rauscher, Gordon Shaw, Linda Levine, Eric Wright, Wendy Dennis, and Robert Newcomb, "Music Training Causes Long-term Enhancement of Preschool Children's Spatial-Temporal Reasoning."  Neurological Research, vol. 19, February 1997.

*  Researchers studying the link between music and intelligence divided preschool children into four groups: one group received private piano lessons, the second had private computer training, while the remaining children were divided among a singing-only group and a no-lesson group.  After six months of training, the groups were tested. Those in the piano group had the most dramatic improvement in spatial-temporal reasoning:   their scores increased by 34 percent. - Amy Graziano, Gordon Shaw, and Eric Wright.  "Music
Training Enhances Spatial-Temporal Reasoning in Young Children:  Towards Educational Experiments." Early Childhood Connections, Summer 1997.

Dr. Jean Houston of the Foundation for Mind Research believes that the brains of children not exposed to music arts education are actually being damaged because these non-verbal modalities help them with skills such as reading, writing, and math. - Sharlene Habermeyer, "Good Music, Brighter Children." (California: Prima Publishing, 1999).

*  Research shows that when a child listens to classical music the right hemisphere of the brain is activated, but when a child studies a musical instrument both left and right hemispheres of the brain "light up."  Significantly, the areas that become activated are the same areas that are involved in analytical and mathematical thinking. - Dee Dickinson, "Music and the Mind."   (Seattle: New Horizons for Learning, 1993).


Next week:
Music's Impact: Elementary to High School  -  Part 1


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