assignment # 7

1. I believe, along with the author, that just passively listening to music will not make a child smarter. However, like the author, I believe that when music is applied within a child's curriculum and daily life, it can greatly benefit the child's cognitive abilities. In addition, research shows that if music is understood, appreciated and played by children that it can greatly benefit a child's education and their cognitive abilities within all aspects of learning.
2. The first type of research finding provided by the author that suggests music has strong biological roots is that animals have strong fundamental music abilities. For instance, research shows that monkeys are able to think in terms of musical abstractions. Another finding provided by the author that suggests music has biological roots is that the use of music is universal. Specifically, there are many cultures across the world that use music to soothe their children such as in lullabies. Another finding provided by the author that suggests music has biological roots is that musically biological factors are found in infants before culture is able to effect them. For instance, research shows that infants have musical capabilities because they can remember two notes just as well as adults can. Finally, the fourth finding that suggests music has strong biological roots is that the brain is organized to process musical activities. Specifically, the two hemispheres of the brain play a certain role in processing music in that the right hemisphere deals with melody and the right deals with the results of that melody and the assessment.
3. According to the article, playing music makes the synapses stonger by exercisng the brain and specifically the parts of it needed for strong cognitive abilities. For example, playing music uses teh sensory and perceptual systems, along with the cognitive system of the brain. Because of this, these systems grow stronger making students ahve better auditory, visual, tactile and kinesthetic abilites. Children will also do better with reading and linguistics seeing that they are apart of the cognitive system. Also, playing music influences planning movements including fine and gross muscle action and coordination. Playing music also increases synaptic strength because there is feedback and evaluation going on within the brain after a performance, strengthening the synapses once more. Lastly, playing music betters the brains memory therefore strengthening the synapses.
4. Research seems to suggest that music does help to improve reading comprehension. Specifically, a study has found that music helps children learn most in the phenomic stage of reading comprehension. More specifically, studies show that a child's ability to discriminate between pitches of music can help benefit the second stage of reading comprehension or the sound-outing stage. The author believes that there needs to be further studies to help clarify what exactly music does in the specific stages of reading comprehension but feels that it provides a good deal of insight and support for musics ability to improve reading comprehension. I agree with the author in that there does need to be more studies done to find more details in this process, however the research already done proves to me that music has a good deal of influence on reading comprehension.
5. The most interesting fact that I found within this article dealing with music is that the entire cerebral cortex of the human brain is active when musicians are playing music. This is fascinating because it shows just how active music makes the brain and how much power it has over the brain.
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