Improve Your Cognitive Abilities With Better Learning Skills Dr. John I. Paciorek.

Improve Your Cognitive Abilities With Better Learning Skills Dr. John I. Paciorek

Classical Music and Learning If you listen to classical music, or any music, will it improve your ability to learn? What effect does walking around a room or gesturing have on learning? Will sound, smells, and other sensory experiences help the learner? Are distractions such as noise detrimental to the learner?

This session will examine some of the research that has been done in these and other areas to find out what can be done to help the learner to learn better.

What is the Mozart Effect? The phrase Mozart Effect was first used in 1991. It is the belief that classical music improves a childs intelligence.

About 2 years after this term was first used, a tremendous amount of public interest was generated when the journal Nature published research results that seemed to suggest that classical music does improve learning.

As a result of this research, thousands of parents played classical Mozart music to their children with the expectation that it would improve their brainpower. Zell Miller, the Governor of Georgia, was so convinced of its effectiveness that in 1998 he asked for money to purchase Classical Music CDs for all newborn babies in the state.

Will listening to Mozart really increase ones intelligence? Lets take a look at what the research actually revealed on this topic.

Researchers from the University of California, Irvine who conducted this study did not even use the term Mozart Effect. The research was conducted on young adults, not children. Only 36 students participated.

On 3 occasions the students were given a series of mental tasks to complete. Before each task, they experienced 10 minutes of: 1.Silence 2.A tape of relaxation instructions 3.Mozarts Sonata for 2 pianos in D Major

What were the results? The students who listened to Mozart did better at tasks where they had to create shapes in their minds. For a short time they were better at spatial tasks where they had to look at folded pieces of paper with cuts in them and to predict how they would appear unfolded. But--this effect only lasted 15 minutes.

Other similar research followed. Listening to music did lead to a temporary improvement in learning but the benefits were short-lived. The research also showed that Mozart was not so special. Other classical musicians like Schubert were just as good as Mozart. Even reading a passage from a Stephen King Novel out loud produced similar results.

In 2006 research was conducted on 8,000 children in Britain. These children listened to: 10 minutes of Mozart A discussion about the experiment A sequence of 3 Pop Songs The children who listened to Mozart did well BUT the results with Pop Music were even better.

This research seems to suggest that it was not so much Mozarts music but a cognitive arousal brought on by the music. To get your mind more activated you need to know the kind of music that appeals to the learner. In fact, it does not have to be music. Anything that makes you more alert should work just as well.

There is a way in which music can make a difference to your IQ. However, it requires considerably more effort than playing a CD. Learning to play a musical instrument can benefit the brain. A year of piano lessons along with regular practice can increase ones IQ by as much as 3 points according to research at the Western University in London, Ontario.

Other Sounds and the Mind What are earworms or brainworms? An earworm, sometimes known as a brainworm,[1] is a catchy piece of music that continually repeats through a persons mind after it is no longer playing (Wikipedia).

Earworms or brainworms may be similar to something called incidental learning? Dr. Robert Gagne describes Incidental Learning as that type of learning which occurs without the learner intentionally trying to learn.

The interesting thing about earworms is that they are part of our mind that is largely out of our control. Neurologist Oliver Sacks wrote in his book Musicophilia that earworms are a clear sign of the overwhelming, and at times, helpless, sensitivity of our brains to music.

Music is defined by repetition, just like earworms, and this might make them hard to forget. They are musical memories that loop, say a particular verse or a hook, forever repeating rather than running to completion.

Earworms have a little twist or peculiarity, something that makes them catchy, and perhaps this is a clue as to why they can take hold of our memory system. They are a phenomenon of long- term memory.

Researchers have also identified them as part of our short-term memory where they are kept alive long enough for us to focus on them. Our short-term memory also has sub systems. One sub-system is known as the minds eye which captures visual information.

A 2nd sub-system is the inner ear which is the part we use for remembering phone numbers. This 2 nd sub-system is the part that seems to get infected with earworms. We lack control over earworms that get stuck in our inner ear.

Our inner ear is a vital part of our cognitive process for remembering and rehearsing sounds. Since it is not under our control then trying to forget it will not work. By purposely trying to forget it you have to recall it which further imbeds it into your long term memory. Earworms or brainworms may have both good and bad qualities.

As reported by WebMD: "Songs with lyrics are reported as most frequently stuck (74%), followed by commercial jingles (15%) and instrumental tunes without words (11%)," (Dr. James Kellaris) "On average, the episodes last over a few hours and occur 'frequently' or 'very frequently' among 61.5% of the sample.

Students' top-10 earworm list: Other (you pick). Everyone has his or her own worst earworm. Chili's "Baby Back Ribs" jingle. "Who Let the Dogs Out" "We Will Rock You"

Students' top-10 earworm list (cont.): Kit-Kat candy-bar jingle ("Gimme a Break...") "Mission Impossible" theme "YMCA" "Whoomp, There It Is" "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" "It's a Small World After All

Using Your Body to Learn If you want to learn quicker, use your body. Researchers already know that learning is easier, quicker, and longer lasting if lessons involve the body as well as the mind. This includes gesturing with the arms or moving around a room.

Many people, especially children, lack the ability to think abstractly. They depend upon physical objects to help them solve problems. Conventional thinking might suggest that teachers should help wean children off physical objects and body gestures to prepare them for the adult world. Actually, the physical world is a very important component of learning.

Spencer Kelly, a psychologist at Colgate University in Hamilton, NY found that people spend 3 times as much time gesturing when they think it is particularly important that they get a message across. It suggests that, at the subconscious level, people appreciate the communicative value of our body language.

Spencer Kelly also found evidence that people like a teacher better when they use arm and hand movements to emphasize points. Research shows that young children learn more if their teacher uses gestures when explaining a concept.

Susan Cook, a psychologist at the University of Iowa, found that children pick up new concepts more effectively if they are taught to mirror and repeat the gestures their teacher uses. Also, lessons involving words and gestures live longer in a students memory than lessons using words alone.

New technical devices like the Nintendo Wii, the Xbox, and touch- screen tablet PCs that use kinetic sensors to determine gestures and body motion have been shown to help learners to learn better. They help the learner to develop a better concept of proportions such as when one plant grows faster than another one.

Researchers at Eberhard Karis University in Germany found that 7 year olds can place numbers more accurately along a line between 0 and 100 if they physically walk the line on a floor.

The lessons we learn at school usually involve a declarative memory which are facts that we can consciously recall or declare at a later date, for example: definitions. However, some of our memories are non-declarative or things we can remember without really being able to explain why. The classic example is how we never forget how to ride a bike.

Psychologist Susan Cook from the University of Iowa states: In every study that weve tested the importance of gesturing, weve found it workseven in the experimental settings where we thought gesturing wouldnt work.

What influence do our senses have on boosting learning power? Research is revealing that smells and sounds can have a significant impact on learning, performance, and creativity. Studies over the past 15 years reveal that children attending schools under the flight paths of large airports lag behind in their exam results.

Bridget Shield, professor of acoustics at London South Bank University and Julie Dockrell at the Institute of Education have studied the effects of all sorts of noises such as traffic & sirens as well as noise generated by children.

The results show that noise negatively impacts a childs performance, in numeracy (the ability to reason and fundamental mathematics), literacy, & spelling. Noise seems to have an especially detrimental effect on children with special needs.

Professor Shield says the sound of babble-the chatter of other children, is particularly distracting in the classroom. These studies suggest that Children in so called open-plan classrooms may not do as well in school because of the babble.

Professor Shield says that people are very distracted by speech- particularly if its understandable, but youre not involved in it. This phenomenon is also known as the irrelevant speech effect. Shield says: its a very common finding in open-plan offices as well. Open-plan offices may similarly negatively impact your performance.

Background noises may or may not be beneficial depending upon the type of noise and the volume. Ravi Mehta at the College of Business at Illinois studied creativity & background noises like coffee-shop chatter and construction-site drilling at different volumes. Creativity was best at medium levels. Loud background noise damaged creativity.

Psychologist Dr. Nick Perham at Cardiff Metropolitan University in the UK says that the most distracting sounds tend to be variable. When there is not much acoustical variation there is not much to capture your attention (steady hum). There may be some benefit from playing music or other sounds in an art class or other situations where creativity is key (medium arousal).

Music is not always helpful while you are trying to work. Trying to perform a task which involves serial recall (mental arithmetic) will be impaired by sounds with acoustic variation, which includes most types of music. Songs with lyrics are more likely to interfere with tasks that involve semantics such as reading comprehension.

Research suggests that smells can help with cognitive performance. Psychologist Mark Moss at Northumbria University studied the effect of smells on cognition using rosemary & lavender. Those who smelled lavender did significantly worse in working memory tests & had impaired reaction times for both memory and attention-based tasks.

Those in the rosemary group did much better than a control group with memory tasks but their reaction times were slower. Smells affect memory since the brains olfactory bulb is intimately linked to the hippocampus which is associated with learning. Subjects smelling rosemary had elevated levels of 1,8-cineole which increases brain cell communication.

Jerome Bruner is a psychologist who focused much of his research on the cognitive development of children and how it relates to education. While he has made many contributions to the field of psychology, his greatest contributions have been in the educational field.

Jerome Bruner theorized that learning occurs by going through 3 stages of representation. Each stage is a "way in which information or knowledge are stored & encoded in memory" (Mcleod, 2008) From: http://bruners- stages.wikispaces.com/Bruner's+Stag es+of+Representation

Jerome Bruner The stages are more-or-less sequential, although they are not necessarily age-related like Piaget- based theories. Going through the stages is essential to truly understanding the concept, as it helps the learner understand why.

1. enactive (action-based) Sometimes called the concrete stage, this first stage involves a tangible hands-on method of learning. Bruner believed that "learning begins with an action - touching, feeling, and manipulating" (Brahier, 2009, p. 52).

1. enactive (action-based) In mathematics education, manipulatives are the concrete objects with which the actions are performed. Common examples of manipulatives used in this stage in math education are algebra tiles, paper, coins, etc. - anything tangible.

2. iconic (image-based) Sometimes called the pictoral stage, this second stage involves images or other visuals to represent the concrete situation enacted in the first stage.

2. iconic (image-based) One way of doing this is to simply draw images of the objects on paper or to picture them in one's head. Other ways could be through the use of shapes, diagrams, and graphs.

3. symbolic (language-based) Sometimes called the abstract stage, the last stage takes the images from the second stage and represents them using words and symbols. The use of words and symbols "allows a student to organize information in the mind by relating concepts together" (Brahier, 2009, p. 53).

3. symbolic (language-based) The words and symbols are abstractions, they do not necessarily have a direct connection to the information. For example, a number is a symbol used to describe how many of something there are, but the number in itself has little meaning without the understanding of it.

3. symbolic (language-based) Other examples would be variables such as x or y, or mathematical symbols such as +, -, /, etc. Finally, language and words are another way to abstractly represent the idea. In the context of math, this could be the use of words such as addition, infinite, the number 3, etc.

Educational Trends in School Wall Street Journal Article March 11, 2014: Shaking Up the Classroom; Schools Scrap Age-Based Grade Levels, Basing Promotion on Mastery of Material

Called competency-based learning, it is based on the idea that students learn at their own pace and should earn credits and advance after they master the materialnot just because they have spent a year in a certain class.

Students are expected to take the initiative to learn on their own with their teacher facilitating a learning environment conducive to learning. They must prove that they have mastered the material before they can move on to the next level. If students are aware of what learning methods work best for them then they can get the maximum benefit from their education.

We are living in the Information Age. Today learners are subjected to such a tremendous amount of information at any given time that each sense, or a combination of senses (see, feel, touch, hear, taste) can easily be overwhelmed. Information overload is a serious problem for the learner.

An important key to learning is to manage the stimuli the learner is constantly being subjected to. Stimulation that is too little or inappropriate for the learner leads to boredom and loss of interest; too much leads to information overload. In order for it to be effective and beneficial it must be meaningful and appropriate for the learner.

Hacking Knowledge: 77 Ways to Learn Faster, Deeper, and Better Feb 28, 2014 oedb.org/ilibrarian/hacking- knowledge/ by Ellyssa Kroski: Director of Information Technology at the NY Law Institute and is a highly regarded writer, speaker and digital librarian who has contributed to a variety of publications like Library Journal.

Improve Your Cognitive Abilities With Better Learning Skills Dr. John I. Paciorek.

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