MEMORY SKILLS TRAINING

School Smarts More Than Reading And Maths

By Natalie Parletta

It’s well established that cognitive abilities such as reasoning, memory and focussed attention help children do well at school, but emerging research suggests it is a two-way street – schooling also helps develop those skills.

This bidirectional effect is reviewed in the journal Child Development Perspectives, and underscores the importance of continuous, quality schooling – particularly for disadvantaged children, says Peng Peng from the University of Texas, US.

There is an enduring, one-way emphasis on training cognition to boost performance in academic abilities such as reading, writing and maths, Peng says. But he was curious to know if there was more to it.

“It’s widely thought that being smart helps you do better in school, but does doing better in school make you smarter?”

Two wide-scoping meta-analyses he led last year suggested it did, finding that long-term correlations between working memory and intelligence and academic achievement in reading and mathematics went both ways.

Exploring this further, Peng and co-author Rogier Kievit from the University of Cambridge, UK, report a body of supporting evidence.

But the two-way interaction between cognition and academic performance was not as strong in children with learning disabilities or from poorer backgrounds, who may lack the appropriate resources or foundational skills.

This suggests those at-risk children are in special need of targeted schooling, and could derive even greater benefits from it, like a snowball effect, says Peng.

They also found that short-term cognitive training doesn’t appear to have a meaningful impact on academic performance, highlighting the importance of sustained training – which can have significant and lasting effects in the long-term.

This is important because academic skills, particularly reading and maths, have wide-ranging benefits not just for educational outcomes, employment and income, but also for life skills, health and psychological wellbeing.

Although much of the research is correlational, Peng and Kievit note a meta-analysis of more than 300 studies that found direct tuition improved both academic performance and measures of cognition and intelligence.

Overall, the findings suggest that schooling has broader significance for children’s development, says Kievit, although more experimental studies are needed to confirm and explore this bidirectional relationship.

“The ultimate hope is to support both cognitive abilities and academic skills by better understanding these processes.”

Synthesis Considers How Being Smart Helps You At School And School Helps You Become Smarter

Academic achievement plays an important role in children's development because academic skills, especially in reading and math, affect many outcomes, including educational attainment, performance and income at work, health, and longevity. A new synthesis looked at the relation between academic achievement (reading, math) and cognitive abilities (working memory, reasoning, executive function), and offered suggestions on how to improve educational and cognitive outcomes.

The synthesis was carried out by researchers at the University of Texas at Austin and the Medical Research Council (MRC) Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit at the University of Cambridge. It is published in Child Development Perspectives, a journal of the Society for Research in Child Development.

"It's widely thought that being smart helps you do better in school, but does doing better in school make you smarter?" asks Peng Peng, assistant professor of special education at the University of Texas at Austin, the lead author of the synthesis. "Research has long supported the idea that cognitive abilities are foundational, that is, that being smart leads to better academic achievement. For example, students who learn how to solve math problems at school can develop the reasoning abilities to solve problems in real life .We found that sustained and high-quality education directly fosters children's academic and cognitive development, and that it may indirectly affect academic and cognitive development by triggering a sort of bidirectional action that amplifies both."

This bidirectional action is especially important for children with disadvantages, who often lack the resources or foundational skills to trigger and benefit from it. The authors note that short-term cognitive training may be insufficient to improve academic performance. This is because beneficial relations between academic skills (reading and math) and cognitive abilities (working memory, reasoning, and executive function) are modest and take time to develop. However, over time, such modest effects can have large and lasting impacts.

"This emerging field suggests that it's better to think of school-based skills such as reading and math, as well as cognitive abilities such as memory and reasoning, as part a system that has positive interactions among each other and that together, support development," concludes Rogier A. Kievit, group leader at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit at the University of Cambridge, who coauthored the synthesis. "The ultimate hope is to support both cognitive abilities and academic skills by better understanding these processes."

More information: The Development of Academic Achievement and Cognitive Abilities: A Bidirectional Perspective, Child Development Perspectives, DOI: 10.1111/cdep.12352

Citation: Synthesis considers how being smart helps you at school and school helps you become smarter (2020, January 28) retrieved 28 January 2020 from https://medicalxpress.Com/news/2020-01-synthesis-smart-school-smarter.Html

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5 Cognitive Benefits Of Music Training

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For many, music study is intrinsically rewarding, and music learning is an end in itself. However, active engagement with music has enduring cognitive benefits, such as concentration, memory, self-discipline, and confidence (Rentfrow & Levitin, 2019). The cognitive benefits of music education extend from early childhood to old age.

1. Concentration: Formal music practice involves several cognitively challenging elements (e.G., long periods of controlled attention, keeping musical passages in working memory). For example, a study showed that increased reliance upon sustained attention was attributed to boosts in working memory in persons over 60 who received piano training (six months) compared to those who did not receive piano training (Lesiuk et al., 2018).

2. Self-Discipline: Music training enhances impulse control. Impulse control is saying no to that third alcoholic drink or eating healthy foods even though the unhealthy ones are tempting. People high on a measure of self-control have better outcomes in various aspects of life (e.G., academic, coping skills, and meaningful relationships with others).

Evidence shows that musical training is a powerful intervention that could help children mature emotionally and intellectually. A research study (Fasano et al., 2019) showed that even an intense and brief period of orchestral music training (10 lessons over three months) had a positive impact on inhibitory control in school-age children.

3. Empathy: Empathy enables people to recognize the emotional and mental states of others and to respond to these with appropriate emotions. During music listening and performance, we perceive the emotional and psychological content in music. Listening to music that contains reflective, thoughtful, and gentle attributes may increase empathy and improve reflective functioning (Greenberg et al., 2016).

4. Self-Esteem: Learning an instrument is one of the best ways to build one’s confidence, and high self-confidence is associated with a positive self-image. And when people’s self-esteem is enhanced, they are more likely to live a healthier lifestyle (Creech, 2019).

5. Protection Against Age-Related Decline: Neural plasticity is a biological foundation of the learning brain. New connections are made in our brains when we learn. Neural plasticity is what keeps us young.

The brain is like a block of clay that can be molded to its environment. And the brain is at its most plastic during the first few years of life. Fortunately, some of the neural plasticity is with us throughout our lifespans, even in our older years. Making music mostly as a leisure activity provides a buffer against cognitive impairment (Schneider et al. 2018).

What is the takeaway message? A key challenge for successful aging is to discover interventions that prevent age-related cognitive decline. Research has shown that music training enhances cognitive performance (i.E., working memory and processing speed) in healthy older adults.

Music training makes unique demands on our brains. Learning musical skills in later life is a promising intervention to offset the age-related cognitive decline. Brain fitness as we age depends considerably on maintaining a healthy, active mind, similar to keeping an active body.

Indeed, this is the belief of many musical therapists. You could maintain and increase your brain health if you decide to pick up an instrument for the very first time in mid­life or beyond.

References

Bugos, J. A. (2014). Community music as a cognitive training program for successful ageing. Int. J. Commun. Music 7, 319–331.

Creech A.  (2019), Using Music Technology Creatively to Enrich Later-Life: A Literature Review, Front. Psychol., 10: 117.

Fasano MC, Semeraro C, Cassibba R, Kringelbach ML, Monacis L, de Palo V, Vuust P, Brattico E.Short-Term Orchestral Music Training Modulates Hyperactivity and Inhibitory Control in School-Age Children: A Longitudinal Behavioural Study, Front Psychol. 2019 Apr 3; 10:750.

Greenberg, D. M., Rentfrow, P. J., & Baron-Cohen, S. (2016). Can music increase empathy? Interpreting musical experience through the empathizing-systemizing (E-S) theory: Implications for Autism. Empirical Musicology Review, 10(1–2), 80–95.

Lesiuk T, Bugos JA, Murakami B. (2018), A Rationale for Music Training to Enhance Executive Functions in Parkinson's Disease: An Overview of the Problem. Healthcare (Basel), Apr 22;c6(2). Pii: E35.

Rentfrow PT, and Levitin DJ (2019) Foundations in Music Psychology: Theory and Research. MIT press. (Creech  et al., 2014) The role of musical possible selves in supporting subjective well-being in later life.

Schneider C. E., Hunter E. G., Bardach S. H. (2018). Potential cognitive benefits from playing music among cognitively intact older adults: a scoping review. J. Appl. Gerontol.  Dec;38(12):1763-1783.