Psychology of Music

The development of music education at the University of Reading is outlined, focusing upon: the pioneering work of Amold Bentley in the training of secondary school music teachers; the Schools Council Project, Music Education of Young Children, which endeavoured to undertake research to help teachers teach music more effectively; the establishment of the Music Education Centre, whose aim was to make an impact on music in pfimary and secondary schools through work with teachers; changes in the 1990s, reflecting local and national shifts in teacher education. Finally, conclusions are presented which suggest possible lines of enquiry for similar historical studies of musc education in university settings.

This paper reflects on some aspects of research on kinaesthesia and how it relates to music education as a whole and instrumental music teaching in particular. It explores the problems of terminology that exist in the literature (kinaesthesia versus proprioception) and describes kinaesthesia as it relates to human physiology. The article contrasts the phenomenological approach of instrumental teachers with the more experimental view of psychological research on this topic and concludes that the current research on kinaesthesia/proprioception is still introductory. Notwithstanding, some ways of benefiting from what is already known on the subject are suggested through the paper.

It has been suggested that the behaviour of pupils with special educational needs may, in part, result from frustration due to lack of physical co-ordination and the consequent inability to perform manual tasks effectively and efficiently. This research investigates the possibility that specific properties of certain Mozart orchestral compositions which, in combination, improve the co-ordination skills of pupils with emotional and behavioural difficulties. Audio tapes of Mozart orchestral compositions provided a sound stimulus for ten boys aged 12+ identified as having special educational needs and emotional and behavioural difficulties. These tapes were then adulterated in an attempt to establish which qualities were producing the effects. Measurements of blood pressure, body temperature, and pulse rate were measured to establish which sound stimulus had an effect on the physiology and metabolism of the subject. In each case an improvement in co-ordination was observed, accompanied by a corresponding drop in the aforementioned physiological parameters and an observed improvement in behaviour. It is suggested that Mozartian qualities may stimulate the production of a chemical, possibly an endorphin, within the brain's limbic system which directly affects the physiological parameters of blood pressure, body temperature, and pulse rate in such pupils, slowing down body metabolism and reducing enzyme and hormone production. This may then produce an improvement in pupils' co-ordination, reduce their frustration, and in turm reduce their aggressive and disruptive behaviour.

In this article we seek to assess the usefulness of the work done by psychologists to explain the sex/gender paradox in music. Whilst not pretending to be an exhaustive review, by tracing the quest as it has been tackled over the past 80 or so years, the principal issues to emerge fall into two categories. On the one hand there are areas in which clear gains appear to have been made, highlighting preferences such as those for different musical characteristics, styles and particular instruments, and the contribution made by investigating personality traits. On the other, however, there are important influences which contribute to gender formation which have remained largely unexplored in music education research, such as race/ethnicity, class and home circumstances, sexuality, disability, birth ordinal position and birth date, as well as the frustratingly inconclusive studies of the functions of brain lateralisation. Thus we reason that psychologists researching music education need to widen their attention to aspects of both difference and absence, acknowledging the real world contexts in which people make musical meanings.

The study from which this report is derived explores children's experience of improvising and composing and seeks to discover how children participate and reflect on creating music. Participants were 18 self-selected 12-year-old children who engaged in 21 weekly music-making sessions over six months. Findings on children's experience of improvisation and composition as distinct modes of bodily intention were determined by the interplay between body movement, instrument and instrument preference. Distinction in bodily intention for improvising was characterised by an intersensory functioning of the "perceiving body" whereas composing engaged the "knowing body" for its kinaesthetic memory.

This article focuses on children's conception of musical improvisation as exemplified in their practice of spontaneous music making. Fieldwork was carried out with a class of ten eight-year-olds. An ethnographic, open-ended process of generating data was employed, the researcher adopting the stance of an informal interviewer, an empathetic receiver of the music, and, at times, a co-player. In their engagement with music making the children were immersed into a meaning-making process, giving specific meanings to notions such as "player", "audience", "teacher", "playing", "inquiring". Interpreting the children's insights within the context of their musical conduct became the principal means for the organisation of analysis. In the process of interpretation, the children's specific and contextually-determined understandings are placed within the wider theory of music making as collective action.

The study suggests three analytic concepts as a means for capturing the essential principles of the children's understanding and practice of improvisation:

(a) Objectification; joint creation of the notion of improvised "piece", based on the development of a participation framework which emphasises the irrevocable "diving into" creating music, with the player(s) feeling a sense of "being inside" a framed musical journey attended by the group. (b) Thoughtfulness; the children's awareness of their immersed involvement into self-determined musical thinking. (c) Shared intentionality; a sense of being heard, and a sense of listening, a feeling that music making is essentially a form of joint action and communication of intentions.

The examples presented in this paper constitute instances of positing questions and developing answers through self-determined action. These questions have little to do with skills: they have to do with concepts, which are immanent to the nature of music and its making.

I want to listen to music with my ears,

and not to see it with my eyes.

To make it myself,

not to be told how it is made. [Manos, aged 8]

This case study of a church organ student focuses on the student's use of learning strategies during the initial phase of preparing a complex piece for public concert performance. It explores whether the results of regulatory decisions on speed and intensity of cognitive activities can be identified in the observed practice behaviour. The subject's use of learning strategies in different tasks during practice indicates to some degree that the results of regulatory decisions of intensity and speed of cognitive activities can be found in the observed behaviour. Chi-square analyses revealed that the transitions from mastering identical to mastering new patterns, and from mastering identical to mastering related patterns, caused the student to increase intensity and subsequently decrease speed of cognitive activities, while the transition from mastering new to mastering identical patterns, and from mastering related to mastering identical patterns, caused the student to decrease intensity and increase speed of his cognitive activities.

This study compared the acquisition of the pitch component of music literacy skills between three groups of pre-school children aged 3-4 years. The Control Group received no tuition at all, while the two teaching groups received 20 tenminute teaching sessions. The children in the StimEquiv Group were taught using a method based on stimulus equivalence whilst those in the Context Group were taught using a method based on spatial and contextual information processing. The children in both teaching groups learned up to five notes and were able to play simple, unlearned melodies made up of these notes 3-5 days after the end of the teaching period (post-test). Preto post-test gains in the accuracy of the playing of these melodies were significant (p < 0.001) for both groups. There was no significant difference found between the preand post-test scores of the Control Group. The children in the teaching groups were given a further test seven weeks after completion of the sessions. There was no significant difference for either group between post-test and re-test indicating that learning had occurred. As they had not been exposed to the intervention, the re-test (a measure of learming) was not given to the Control Group.

This study investigated the planning strategies of university music students learning a traditionally and non-traditionally notated score. After completing a modified form of the SPQ, participants read two musical scores on a PC, one line at a time. Reading times for each line were taken, as were reaction times to a secondary probe. At the completion of each score, participants verbalised how they would go about learning the score to a level of performance competence. Protocols were scored for the presence of higher-level, mid-level and lower-level strategies, and for the level of focus in planning. Path analyses, with planning focus as the outcome measure, were conducted for each score. In both sets of analyses, reference to higher-level processing strategies predicted a higher planning focus, while a deep approach predicted higher-level strategy use. For the traditional score, surface learning was a negative predictor of high-level strategies, while a longer reading time was a positive predictor of higher-level strategy use. For the non-traditional score, both highand mid-level strategies predicted a higher focus, while low-level strategies predicted a lower focus. Familiarity with graphic notation, through mid-level strategies, also predicted focus. The implications of the results for the teaching of music are discussed.