Speaking to the trained ear: musical expertise enhances the recognition of emotions in speech prosody

Language and music are closely related in our minds. Does musical expertise enhance the recognition of emotions in speech prosody? Forty highly trained musicians were compared with 40 musically untrained adults (controls) in the recognition of emotional prosody. For purposes of generalization, the participants were from two age groups, young (18-30 years) and middle adulthood (40-60 years). They were presented with short sentences expressing six emotions-anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, surprise-and neutrality, by prosody alone. In each trial, they performed a forced-choice identification of the expressed emotion (reaction times, RTs, were collected) and an intensity judgment. General intelligence, cognitive control, and personality traits were also assessed. A robust effect of expertise was found: musicians were more accurate than controls, similarly across emotions and age groups. This effect cannot be attributed to socioeducational background, general cognitive or personality characteristics, because these did not differ between musicians and controls; perceived intensity and RTs were also similar in both groups. Furthermore, basic acoustic properties of the stimuli like fundamental frequency and duration were predictive of the participants' responses, and musicians and controls were similarly efficient in using them. Musical expertise was thus associated with cross-domain benefits to emotional prosody. These results indicate that emotional processing in music and in language engages shared resources.     

Conditional Discriminations by Preverbal Children in an Identity Matching-to-Sample Task

This study sought to develop methodology for assessing whether children aged 16-21 months could learn to match stimuli on the basis of physical identity in conditional discrimination procedures of the type routinely used in stimulus equivalence research with older participants. The study was conducted in a private room at a daycare center for children and toddlers. The child and the research sat together on the floor facing an apparatus with two windows. Stimuli to be discriminated were toys especially designed to attract the child's attention and maintain continued interest. On simple discrimination and discrimination reversal trials that were programmed in initial training, S+ and S- toys were displayed within the two windows. When the child touched the window containing the toy defined as S+ on a given trial, s/he was allowed to manipulate/play with that toy. Selections of the S- toy ended the trial without a play opportunity. On subsequent identity matching-to-sample trials, the child was first allowed to manipulate a sample toy. Then, S+ (matching) and S- (nonmatching) comparison toys were displayed within the windows, and the selection consequences were the same as on simple discrimination trials. The study provides evidence that preverbal children can master simple and conditional discrimination performances via such procedures, perhaps setting the stage for subsequent studies aimed at establishing procedural control of the discrimination baselines needed to assess the stimulus equivalence potential of children in this age range.     

Integrating fundamental movement skills in late childhood

The study examined how children of different ages integrate fundamental movement skills, such as running and throwing, and whether their developmental status was related to the combination of these skills. Thirty children were divided into three groups (G1 = 6-year-olds, G2 = 9-year-olds, and G3 = 12-year-olds) and filmed performing three tasks: running, overarm throwing, and the combined task. Patterns were identified and described, and the efficiency of integration was calculated (distance differences of the ball thrown in two tasks, overarm throwing and combined task). Differences in integration were related to age: the 6-year-olds were less efficient in combining the two skills than the 9- and 12-year-olds. These differences may be indicative of a phase of integrating fundamental movement skills in the developmental sequence. This developmental status, particularly throwing, seems to be related to the competence to integrate skills, which suggests that fundamental movement skills may be developmental modules.     

The effect of age on decision making according to the Iowa gambling task

Aging has been associated with several brain changes that often affect the cognitive functioning of adults, but changes in executive functions, particularly in the field of decision making, have not been fully investigated. The Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) is a widely used tool to evaluate decision making, but little is known about the effect of age on its results. This study used the IGT and compared healthy young (n = 40) and elderly (n = 40) adults to evaluate their decision making processes. There were significant differences in the learning curve of the two age groups, but no difference in overall IGT performance. The results for the first IGT block were different from those of the rest of the task, and the group of elderly adults had a better performance in this block. Elderly adults also showed a preference for deck A, the one that resulted in greater losses. Findings confirmed the results of other studies, which reported that the IGT block score is the variable with the greatest sensitivity to age in this instrument.     

Sex differences in social buffering and social contagion of alarm responses in zebrafish

Animal Cognition - The alarm substance in fish is a pheromone released by injured individuals after a predator attack. When detected by other fish, it triggers fear/defensive responses, such as...     

Life and Death of Music as Education: A Philosophical Overview

Abstract

This essay contemplates the role of music as education (as opposed to music education) in the Western World since Ancient Greek philosophical inquiry and throughout early Christianity, the Middle Ages, and Modernism. It regards music as a potential tool for instruction and knowledge exchange. In particular, this essay examines post-Enlightenment philosophical trends that reshaped Western understandings of music. Finally, this paper explores music education within the Seventh-day Adventist educational system as influenced by both nineteenth-century thought as well as informed by the reformative attempts that followed in the twentieth century.