{"id":2955,"date":"2018-06-28T14:05:27","date_gmt":"2018-06-28T18:05:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/?p=2955"},"modified":"2018-06-28T14:05:27","modified_gmt":"2018-06-28T18:05:27","slug":"sound-advice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/sound-advice\/","title":{"rendered":"Sound Advice"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In 1993, a study published in Nature claimed that college students performed better on cognitive tests after listening to Mozart as opposed to silence or a relaxation tape. The findings set off a phenomenon wherein parents believed playing classical music for their children\u2014even to those still in the womb\u2014would lead to higher IQs.<\/p>\n<aside>\n<header><span style=\"color: #1e73be\">More Than Fun And Games<\/span><\/header>\n<p>Play gives kids the opportunity to build creative, imaginative, and other key developmental skills. Professor of Psychology Robyn Holmes studies different aspects of children\u2019s play, such as the role of outdoor play in development and how play differs across diverse cultural communities.<\/p>\n<p>She recently traveled to the Hawaiian island of Lanai to look at caregivers\u2019 attitudes toward play, finding that adults mostly encouraged types of play that fostered social skills like cooperation and sharing.<\/p>\n<\/aside>\n<p>But researchers later contested the \u201cMozart effect\u201d when numerous follow-up studies were unable to replicate the results and failed to find a relationship between classical music and its cognitive benefit.<\/p>\n<p>While music alone doesn\u2019t enhance intelligence, it may lead to modest improvements in spatial task performance simply because we enjoy listening to something pleasant while engaging in challenging tasks. While previous works used college students, Louis Koolidge \u201917 and his senior thesis mentor, Professor of Psychology Robyn Holmes, wanted to see how enjoyable background music might impact young children\u2019s performance on a puzzle.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAll cultures have music, and in most communities, children are exposed to it from the time they are born,\u201d says Holmes, whose research focuses primarily on children\u2019s play. \u201cWe wanted to explore whether background music would interfere or be beneficial for young children when working on a cognitive task.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Koolidge and Holmes visited three local pre-schools, where 87 primarily European-American children tried to solve a 12-piece jigsaw puzzle as best they could in one minute. The children wore headphones during the task, and listened to either music with lyrics, music without lyrics, or silence. After gathering advice from teachers and parents, the researchers chose the song \u201cYou\u2019re Welcome\u201d from the <em>Moana<\/em> soundtrack\u2014an upbeat tune that most kids would recognize and enjoy.<\/p>\n<p>Overall, children who listened to the song without lyrics completed more pieces of the puzzle, while music with lyrics and silence were less beneficial.<\/p>\n<p>The journal <em>Perceptual and Motor Skills<\/em> published Koolidge and Holmes\u2019 study on January 9.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOur hope is that these results will start to inform classroom practice and improve children\u2019s academic experience,\u201d says Holmes. \u201cWhen children are doing cognitively demanding tasks, maybe background music\u2014something that children like and puts them in a happy mood\u2014could be beneficial to helping them acquire certain cognitive skills and abilities.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Not all background music is the same when it comes to improving 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