Melodic learning

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Melodic Learning is a multimodal learning method that uses the defining elements of singing (pitch, rhythm and rhyme) to facilitate the capture, storage and retrieval of information. Widely recognized examples of Melodic Learning include using the alphabet song to learn the alphabet and This Old Man to learn counting.

Contents

Overview

In 2004, Dr. Susan Homan, Dr. Robert Dedrick and then doctoral student, Marie C. Biggs of the University of South Florida's College of Education began researching the use of a non-standard approach to reading remediation that used repeated singing of grade leveled songs with struggling, middle school readers. When the results of their pilot study as well as further research over the following five years consistently showed significant gains, Dr. Homan, et al. began searching the literature for an explanation as to why this non-traditional approach was effective.

After reviewing recent findings in the fields of literacy, neuroscience and anthropology, Dr. Homan, in collaboration with Dr. Eliot Levinson, identified this use of repeated singing to accelerate learning as a form of, "Melodic Learning". Dr. Homan posits that other forms of Melodic Learning include the singing of hymns in organized religions and the use of oral tradition to pass on important information from generation to generation in pre-literate societies [1]

Multi-media Learning Theory

Melodic learning combines melody with visual imagery to enhance learning. Melodic learning is an extension of Multimedia Learning Theory because it focuses specifically on the addition of music to learning. Research indicates that multiple types of media have positive effects on a learner however, multimedia learning can encompass as few as two senses whereas melodic learning explores how music embeds learning deeper into the human brain.

The neuroscience about how music affects learning is a relatively new area of research. Music is a part of every known culture including in the very distant past. [2] Dr. Patel's research links music to linguistics, to early learning, to language learning, and to literacy learning.

Music engages all of the following brain functions: [3]

Multiple Modalities

Learning with Sesame Street on the television is an example of melodic learning. Through Sesame Street, young children experience and advance emergent literacy processes through poems, jingles, chants, word games and singing songs. Several of the principles of literacy learning interact. Rhyming and singing are high-level multi-modal interactions of visual, auditory/aural, and kinesthetic modalities. [4] Rhythmic and tonal processing also contribute to the success of this learning process.

Jumping rope is an example of melodic learning. Tonal, rhythmic, aural and visual elements interplay as children sing and rhyme. The rope's motion supplies the kinesthetic element to enhance the process. [5] This may explain why many children learn jump rope rhymes faster and retain them longer than they do for many of their classroom lessons.

A combination of five specific modalities or Learning styles affect how a child learns while playing or while watching Sesame Street or jumping rope:

The integration of these modalities creates more powerful and permanent measurable learning outcomes and can accelerate learning, especially struggling learners.

Neuroscience evidence

Melodic learning appears to derive its effectiveness from the special nature of music and singing's activity pattern in the human brain. A series of books published in the 2000s by noted neuroscientists document the unique relationship between music and our brains, including Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks, This Is Your Brain On Music by Daniel Levitin, and Music, Language, and the Brain by Aniudh Patel.

History

An earworm is a portion of a song that repeats itself inside one's head. As recently as 2005, researchers discovered that the earworm is engraved in the auditory cortex and instantly retrieved. [6] Industrial psychologists have made good use of this link between music and learning by creating catchy jingles to sell products. More recently earworms are being used in training products. [7]

Nearly every civilization uses music to share information. Australia's aboriginal tribesmen used songs to detail complex routes to important places. Although this was not a feat of memory alone and that rock art serve as tangible manuscripts for these musicians. In Africa, drums were used to communicate. Throughout Europe roving minstrels and troubadours sang ballads retelling the news and politics of the day. In churches, temples and mosques, chanted prayers etch religious words into memory. The connection between music and learning runs deep inside the brain. The patterns reinforce each other resulting in a greater learning effect. [8]

Adults and children can recognize a wrong note in a simple melody. If one note of the simple five-note opening to The Star-Spangled Banner is played incorrectly, those who've heard the song before can instantly recognize that it is wrong. Westerners recognize standard chord progressions that are "wrong" even though they have never heard them before. Researchers link the phenomena of identifying the wrong note and identifying the wrong word (syntactically) to the same part of the brain, thereby demonstrating how music and words are intertwined. [9]

See also

Further reading

Related Research Articles

Visual thinking, also called visual or spatial learning or picture thinking, is the phenomenon of thinking through visual processing. Visual thinking has been described as seeing words as a series of pictures. It is common in approximately 60–65% of the general population. "Real picture thinkers", those who use visual thinking almost to the exclusion of other kinds of thinking, make up a smaller percentage of the population. Research by child development theorist Linda Kreger Silverman suggests that less than 30% of the population strongly uses visual/spatial thinking, another 45% uses both visual/spatial thinking and thinking in the form of words, and 25% thinks exclusively in words. According to Kreger Silverman, of the 30% of the general population who use visual/spatial thinking, only a small percentage would use this style over and above all other forms of thinking, and can be said to be true "picture thinkers".

Agnosia Medical condition

Agnosia is the inability to process sensory information. Often there is a loss of ability to recognize objects, persons, sounds, shapes, or smells while the specific sense is not defective nor is there any significant memory loss. It is usually associated with brain injury or neurological illness, particularly after damage to the occipitotemporal border, which is part of the ventral stream. Agnosia only affects a single modality, such as vision or hearing. More recently, a top-down interruption is considered to cause the disturbance of handling perceptual information.

An earworm, sometimes referred to as a brainworm, sticky music, stuck song syndrome, or, most commonly after earworms, Involuntary Musical Imagery (INMI), is a catchy and/or memorable piece of music or saying that continuously occupies a person's mind even after it is no longer being played or spoken about. Involuntary musical imagery as a label is not solely restricted to earworms; musical hallucinations also fall into this category, although they are not the same thing. Earworms are considered to be a common type of involuntary cognition. Some of the phrases often used to describe earworms include "musical imagery repetition" and "involuntary musical imagery".

Learning styles refer to a range of theories that aim to account for differences in individuals' learning. Many theories share the proposition that humans can be classified according to their "style" of learning, but differ in how the proposed styles should be defined, categorized and assessed. A common concept is that individuals differ in how they learn.

Kinesthetic learning, kinaesthetic learning, or tactile learning is a learning style in which learning takes place by the students carrying out physical activities, rather than listening to a lecture or watching demonstrations. As cited by Favre (2009), Dunn and Dunn define kinesthetic learners as students who require whole-body movement to process new and difficult information. However, scientific studies do not support the claim that using kinesthetic modality improves learning in students identified as kinesthetic learners.

Auditory imagery is a form of mental imagery that is used to organize and analyze sounds when there is no external auditory stimulus present. This form of imagery is broken up into a couple of auditory modalities such as verbal imagery or musical imagery. This modality of mental imagery differs from other sensory images such as motor imagery or visual imagery. The vividness and detail of auditory imagery can vary from person to person depending on their background and condition of their brain. Through all of the research developed to understand auditory imagery behavioral neuroscientists have found that the auditory images developed in subjects' minds are generated in real time and consist of fairly precise information about quantifiable auditory properties as well as melodic and harmonic relationships. These studies have been able to recently gain confirmation and recognition due to the arrival of Positron emission tomography and fMRI scans that can confirm a physiological and psychological correlation.

Visual learning is a learning style in the Fleming VAK/VARK model where a learner needs to see information in order to process it. Visual learners can utilize graphs, charts, maps, diagrams, and other forms of visual stimulation to effectively interpret information. The Fleming VAK/VARK model also includes kinesthetic learning and auditory learning. There is no evidence that providing visual materials to students identified as having a visual style improves learning.

Sensory processing is the process that organizes sensation from one's own body and the environment, thus making it possible to use the body effectively within the environment. Specifically, it deals with how the brain processes multiple sensory modality inputs, such as proprioception, vision, auditory system, tactile, olfactory, vestibular system, interoception, and taste into usable functional outputs.

Music psychology Branch of both psychology and musicology

Music psychology, or the psychology of music, may be regarded as a branch of both psychology and musicology. It aims to explain and understand musical behaviour and experience, including the processes through which music is perceived, created, responded to, and incorporated into everyday life. Modern music psychology is primarily empirical; its knowledge tends to advance on the basis of interpretations of data collected by systematic observation of and interaction with human participants. Music psychology is a field of research with practical relevance for many areas, including music performance, composition, education, criticism, and therapy, as well as investigations of human attitude, skill, performance, intelligence, creativity, and social behavior.

Auditory learning is a learning style in which a person learns through listening. There is no evidence that providing educational materials in an audio format to a student identified as an auditory learner improves the learning process.

Auditory processing disorder (APD), rarely known as King-Kopetzky syndrome or auditory disability with normal hearing (ADN), is a neurodevelopmental disorder affecting the way the brain processes auditory information. Individuals with APD usually have normal structure and function of the outer, middle, and inner ear. However, they cannot process the information they hear in the same way as others do, which leads to difficulties in recognizing and interpreting sounds, especially the sounds composing speech. It is thought that these difficulties arise from dysfunction in the central nervous system. It is highly prevalent in individuals with other neurodevelopmental disorders, such as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Autism Spectrum Disorders, Dyslexia, and Sensory Processing Disorder.

Eleanor M. Saffran, an American neuroscientist, was a researcher in the field of Cognitive Neuropsychology. Her interest in Neuropsychology began at the Baltimore City hospitals of Johns Hopkins University, where her research unit focused on neurological patients with language or cognitive impairments. In papers published between 1976 and 1982, Dr. Saffran spelled out the methodological tenets of “cognitive neuropsychology” exemplified in her studies of aphasia, alexia, auditory verbal agnosia, and short-term memory impairment.

Musical memory refers to the ability to remember music-related information, such as melodic content and other progressions of tones or pitches. The differences found between linguistic memory and musical memory have led researchers to theorize that musical memory is encoded differently from language and may constitute an independent part of the phonological loop. The use of this term is problematic, however, since it implies input from a verbal system, whereas music is in principle nonverbal.

The neuroscience of music is the scientific study of brain-based mechanisms involved in the cognitive processes underlying music. These behaviours include music listening, performing, composing, reading, writing, and ancillary activities. It also is increasingly concerned with the brain basis for musical aesthetics and musical emotion. Scientists working in this field may have training in cognitive neuroscience, neurology, neuroanatomy, psychology, music theory, computer science, and other relevant fields.

Cognitive musicology is a branch of cognitive science concerned with computationally modeling musical knowledge with the goal of understanding both music and cognition.

Beat deafness is a form of congenital amusia characterized by a person's inability to distinguish musical rhythm or move in time to it.

SingingCoach is a downloadable, learn-to-sing software program from Electronic Learning Products, Inc.

Catchiness is how easy it is for a song, tune, or phrase to be recalled. It is often taken into account when writing songs, catchphrases, advertising slogans, jingles etc. Alternatively, it can be defined as how difficult it is for one to forget it. Songs that embody high levels of remembrance or catchiness are literally known as "catchy songs" or "earworms". While it is hard to scientifically explain what makes a song catchy, there are many documented techniques that recur throughout catchy music, such as repetition, hooks and alliteration. Selling Sounds: The Commercial Revolution in American Music says that "although there was no definition for what made a song catchy, all the songwriting guides agreed that simplicity and familiarity were vital".

Multisensory learning is the assumption that individuals learn better if they are taught using more than one sense (modality). The senses usually employed in multisensory learning are visual, auditory, kinesthetic, and tactile – VAKT. Other senses might include smell, taste and balance.

Musical literacy is the reading, writing, and playing of music, as well an understanding of cultural practice and historical and social contexts.

References

  1. ↑ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2014-02-23. Retrieved 2014-02-08.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  2. ↑ Aniruddh, Patel. "Music and the Mind". Grey Matters. University of California Television. Retrieved 4 May 2011.
  3. ↑ Zatorre, Robert. J. (19 July 2001). "Do You See What I'm Saying? Interactions between Auditory and Visual Cortices in Cochlear Implant Users". Neuron. 31 (1): 13–14. doi: 10.1016/S0896-6273(01)00347-6 . PMID   11498046. S2CID   15924119.
  4. ↑ Baines, Lawrence (2008). Teacher's Guide to Multisensory Learning. Alexandria, VA: ASCD. ISBN   978-1-4166-0713-7. Archived from the original on June 13, 2010.
  5. ↑ Neil, Fleming. "VARK, A Guide to Learning Styles". Archived from the original on 2011-05-01.
  6. ↑ Kellaris, James (22 Feb 2003). "His study, Dissecting Earworms: Further Evidence on the 'Song-Stuck-in-Your-Head' Phenomenon". Presentation to Society for Consumer Psychology.
  7. ↑ DeNoon, Daniel. "Songs Stick in Everyone's Head". Health News. WebMD. Retrieved May 4, 2011.
  8. ↑ Sacks, Oliver (2007). MusicoPhilia: Tales of Music and the Brain. New York: Random House. ISBN   978-1-4000-3353-9.
  9. ↑ Sacks, Oliver (2007). MusicoPhilia: Tales of Music and the Brain. New York: Random House. ISBN   978-1-4000-3353-9.
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