Research
Research Summary
Research conducted by Gordon Shaw in the 1990s showed that the brain's natural neuron firing patterns could be translated into complex musical melodies.
The Music and the Brain program was developed as a “real world” application of the inspirational research linking cognitive ability and music instruction, particularly in young children.
In addition to developing a solid curriculum and teaching materials, Music and the Brain set up research to study the effects of the program on students’ aptitude in multiple subject areas including reading, spelling, calculation, acquiring English as a second language, and attention.
Research Subjects and Groups
After the initial pilot program in 1997 (at P.S. 144 in Harlem and Midtown West in Clinton) which helped to guide the development of the curriculum, research was set up for the 1998-1999 school year. The study involved 80 children from PS 144 and 80 ESL children from the newly added PS 149 Q in Jackson Heights. Students from all six kindergarten classes were randomly assigned to one of two groups; the experimental group was given Music and the Brain lessons and the control groups were given language arts. All of the students received two 45 minute classes per week throughout the school year.
During the Language Arts sessions, age appropriate books, over 70 during the course of the year, were read aloud and discussed and sometimes acted out. In some cases, sessions included drawings related to the story, puppetry, and other miscellaneous crafts.
The experimental Music and the Brain lessons included singing, rhythmic activities, music notation, listening to music recordings, movement, finger exercises and keyboard playing.
Testing
The children were pre-tested in September before beginning classes and post-tested during the spring after classes ended. The subtests included vocabulary, identification of letters and words, comprehension, calculation, and quantitative concepts. Woodcock-Johnson and its Spanish parallel the Bateria-R were used to measure cognitive abilities. In addition, they were also given the puzzle subtest from, the McCarthy Scales of Children's Abilities. The children at PS 149 Q were also given the Language Assessment Battery (LAB) administered by the school. All testing, with the exception of the LAB, was done individually, and took approximately 1-2 hours to complete.
Results/Discussion
Results showed statistically significant results favoring the experimental (MATB) children, on standardized tests, in calculation, reading and spelling. At PS 149, the music group also scored significantly higher on the NYC administered LAB test, which measures English as a second language. The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of the Music and the Brain program on young children's cognitive abilities. The results of this study revealed that there were significant differences. These findings support previous research (Raucher & Zupan, 2000; Vaughn, 2000) that suggests that music training has an effect on mathematics and spatial temporal reasoning. Of particular interest is the finding that the kindergartners receiving MATB training also did better on language tasks than their peers who received an enriched language arts program.
Our study suggests that there is a positive relationship between music and language learning as well as music and math. This research indicates that having music in elementary schools is not a luxury, but rather has profound implications for how children learn and develop.
This study supports the hypothesis that music has a direct effect on cognitive abilities. Although this study is limited by the sample size and the skill of the teachers who worked with the children, these results have important implications for politicians, social scientists, and educators looking for credible and constructive ways to bolster the reading and math scores of children.
