Assignment+No.+4+Journal+articles

Please read the three journal article summaries. Please provide a response to the summaries your group did not write.


 * Summary No. 1** //The Association Between Types of Music Enjoyed and Cognitive, Behavioral, and Personality Factors of Those Who Listen.


 * Group members: Odum, Ky, Heather, Julia, Rianne, David and Teddy**//

The article researched was “The Association between Types of Music Enjoyed and Cognitive, Behavioral, and Personality factors of Those Who Listen”. In the article, Darren George, Kelly Stickler, Faith Rachid and Alayne Wopnford explore and analyze several different types of music, associating the unique personalities and characteristics attributed by these styles of music. For these experiments, 30 unique styles of music were grouped into eight categories: Rebellious, Classical, Rhythmic and Intense, Easy Listening, Fringe, Contemporary Christian, Jazz and Blues, and Traditional Christian.

The method for this study was a self-completed survey form. The sample size consisted of 358 students, 203 women and 155 men with ethnic and age demographics being very general (all ethnicities, and ages from 18 to 70). The survey measured; spirituality, self-esteem, social skills, locus of control, intelligence, the big five personality inventory, hostility and depression, with respect to the different styles of music listened to.

The conclusions drawn by this study were rebellious music is generally associated with a younger generation, working less, greater hostility, being less educated and having a lower self-esteem. Rhythmic and Intense music shows an identical profile to rebellious music, differing only in a significantly lower IQ. Classical music portrayed a polar opposite profile to the two previous styles (i.e., smarter, nicer, harder working) and showed no correlation between sex or age. While comparing Contemporary Christian Music (CCM) to Traditional Christian Music (TCM), it was found that these listeners had a higher level of spirituality, with the Traditional listeners having an even higher level of this. CCM is also associated with rebellious music, while TCM had a strong negative correlation with CCM. With the other styles of music observed, no other significant correlations were found.

Quantitative research was the method of obtaining information for this article. This means of research worked well for this research because the main focus was to see how music affects behavioral patterns in the human mind. With this main goal, a survey was useful to gather a general conscience on the matter, due to fact that the same questions were asked to each individual and they were all had an equal opportunity to respond to the question in a similar manner. With this, a direct and informative answer was given and there was no guessing involved in what people were trying to say.

We found that this study was conducted in a scientific manner, but we found that the sample size (358) was far too small to be conclusive. Variables were not adequately controlled to support the conclusions of the article (other factors could have been at play). A large portion of the article simply compared and contrasted CCM with TCM, as well as Classical and Rebellious. Despite this, the article did cite other research and previous studies, enabling the reader to conduct further study in this subject, and the data that was collected was assembled professionally, and was very well organized.


 * Summary No. 2 //The Other Mozart effect: An Open Letter To Music Educators//

****Group Members: Joshua, Jackson, aaron, Jen, Kathleen**


 * < Since the fairly recent rapid increase in readily available technology, a strong emphasis has been placed on students learning Science and Math. Science and Math are definitely useful subjects to study in this day and age, but when so much attention is paid to one domain of scholarship, the others often get left out. A fine example of this is the study of Music. Music educators are trying to gather arguments to support Music Education, such as the cognitive effects that Music provokes. However, in his essay "The Other Mozart Effect: An Open Letter To Music Educators", Dr. Robert A. Duke, Professor of Music at the University of Texas at Austin warns music educators that they can no longer support music education with cognitive benefits. The following paragraphs summarize his 20-page argument and his research.

With schools focusing so much attention on standardized testing, principals and curriculum planners are really pondering the importance of music education. Even in the midst of these arguments it is important to remember the real reason why we choose to educate children in music and to not lose sight of our ultimate goal in teaching. Although we get excited about new musicology research we must remember exactly how people get these results and what they mean. Many researches have shown results which agree with teachers observations of music students, while others reports more subtle changes not observable to naive eyes.

Dr. Duke has observed various music students and has deduced an "effect" for each situation. The "Sousa effect" is responsible for making children in marching bands want to hone their physical and musical skills. Along with that, the "Rogers and Hammerstein effect" makes children involved in theatre compound all their many skills in music, art and theatre into one immense project. When playing music, rambunctious, playful children transform into diligent, tactful children to ensure the sound they make is pleasing. This is called the "Hot Crossed Buns effect". The "Boyz II Men effect" is the name given to the motivation of teenagers to buy music and invest time in listening and physically responding to music, often based on just the lyrics. The "Other Mozart Effect" is the name given to the sense of personal accomplishment and satisfaction of mastering a particularily difficult piece of music. The Mozart Effect, not "discovered" by the author, is the increase in cognitive functions caused by listening to classical music.

Dr. Duke explains that he plans to support his "effects" using the scientific method for proving theories. Unless an experiment is repeated several times we can not conclude accurate results. Therefore it is very important to be able to repeat the results of an experiment for a researcher to have confidence in his hypothesis. When a researcher states that his/her experiment is significant, they mean that there are no variables that create basis results. "Effect size" refers to the difference between the experimental group and the control group. If the effect size is great than the new research found is important, but if the effect size is small, the research still has statistical significance but the effect size is very small.

Many people are frustrated with public announcements of recent research regarding diet and heath issues in which the results are minuscule or invisible - in which the effect size is very small. People also prefer questions with “right or wrong” answers as opposed to questions with multiple ones. It is also more important to examine the magnitude of the difference than simply noting it being different. The Mozart Effect is not true because the difference of the marks of the students who listened to Mozart was only three marks higher than those who did not, which was actually within the expected error of measurement. People take the issue seriously because intelligence, math and test scores are discussed, even if the difference that music makes is only three points. Is the high cost of music education really worth those three points on a test?

The Mozart Effect is therefore only another reason for supporting music education, but the attention given to it is misleading. Success rates shown by SAT score comparisons that show music classes to help do not conclusively prove anything. The SAT scores actually only show that there are lots of smart kids in music class. These comparisons only show that the smart students get put into the music classes not that music makes them smarter.

In addition, the Mozart effect has not reliably been observed, the higher scores may be due to other factors, and the effect is not limited to Mozart alone. So we need to stop talking as if there is convincing evidence to support this theory and we have to stop using it as a weapon in our arsenal as music education promoters. We need to also consider carefully the benefits of music in proportion to their effect sizes and we need to teach by example and start requiring reliable evidence.

Dr. Duke is comprehensive in explaining all aspects of his theories and any methods he employs to deduce his concluding thoughts on music education. However, he seems to have a very bad case of verbal diarrhea. He uses more adjectives than necessary to explain his feelings and is very wordy. It's as if he assumes his reader to have no knowledge of anything, and has to explain every minute detail.

The article is also difficult to read due to all the unnecessary words and even unnecessary sentences. It takes him 20 pages to argue his case. The article is allegedly directed at Music Educators, who are probably smart people and can fill in the blanks between important points. The author obviously did not do a lot of editing because many statements are either difficult or pointless. His diction is very simple and at some times it makes his writing look unprofessional.

The initial impression the members of our group had was that Dr. Duke was arguing against music education as a whole. This was due to his confusing statements. We were appalled at how redundant his argument appeared to be - why was a music professor arguing against music education? After several re-readings, it was still difficult to see where he stood regarding the importance of music education. We would suggest to Dr. Duke that he edits his writing several times in order not to confuse his readers and mistake him for a redundant fool.

 ||<  || **Summary No. 3** Research Article - //Effects of threes years of Piano instruction on Children.//
 * Group Members: Michelle Jacobs, Sandy Hay, Jon Quek, Amy Welcher, Victor Brayley****.

The article which we read was concerning a study done on grade four students and the effects of piano instruction. Over a period of three years 117 students were tested concerning academic achievement, school performance, and self esteem. Half of the students were given private piano instruction and an acoustic piano in their home. The author started out explaining other similar studies which have been conducted upon the same grounds. They described a bit about the "Mozart effect" and what had been researched there. They explains that many theories have been made and the numerous results that have been given. Theories include: that studying music and taking lessons will improve your cognitive abilities and help you in language subjects and math, and listening to background music (such as Mozart) will help your children in school. They also researched studies which looked at the relationship between music and self esteem. Most studies in that area were quite positive showing that most people who participate in music and musical activities have higher self esteem. Interesting information that was also mentioned by the author was results from a questionnaire done in the United States of America. "They found that most American piano students were female (70%), white Caucasian (80%), lived in suburban homes and had pianos (96%). They lived with both parents (84%), who were well educated (80% of mothers and fathers had at least one college degree) and earned medium to high incomes (83% reported incomes $40,000 and 4% below $25,000)" I found this information quite interesting and found that although it may represent the area which was questioned it does not at all represent Fredericton, especially in the area of white Caucasian and female. After describing previous results of similar studies the author starts to explain in detail what happened with this study. Letters were sent home with all grade four students of 20 English speaking schools in and around Montréal. The parents who replied and suited the criteria (children not already involved in music and total income below $40,000, etc.) with their children were selected to participate, totaling 58 girls and 59 boys. The experimental group was made up of 67 randomly picked children from total group and 50 were left as a control. The children in the experimental group were each given an acoustic piano for their home and free piano lessons for three years with teachers who had agreed to follow a "traditional curriculum". The lessons were of half an hour in length for the first two years and 45 minutes for the third year. All of the children (control and experimental) completed tests on a regular basis, concerning academic achievement and self esteem. The school report cards were also supplied for further research. Generally the results were as we expected. The only noticeable differences between the two groups were of self-esteem and music class marks. The self-esteem of those participating in music lessons was increased more than those in the control group and of course the music class marks were higher for those in the experimental group. At the end of the article the author mentioned a few ways that the study could have been improved. They noted variables that had been ignored: gender, family structure, exact income and parental employment. Although when looking at the results of test, etc. these variables were taken into account. We found that this research described in this article was poorly done. It was not quantitative but more of a qualitative study, although it was not very good either way. We found that they did not control important variables like school activities, parental employment and family structure. There were also not enough students involved with the study to have great results. With just over 110 students living in one area of Québec (Montréal), they did not have quite enough gathered information. Considering all this we believe the results are reasonable and students in general would not improve academically from the experiment but would only benefit from a self confidence boost. We also think it is reasonable to see that all of the students in the experimental group had higher music marks as that is what they are studying. Overall we found this to be a very interesting study to conduct but it could have been better planned, approached and carried out in the end. **