揽瓜阁俱乐部第二期 Day14 2020.06.28
【人文科学-音乐】 Does Music Boost Your Cognitive Performance? （898字 精读 必做篇）
Music makes life better in so many ways. It elevates mood, reduces stress and eases pain. Music is heart-healthy, because it can lower blood pressure, reduce heart rate and decrease stress hormones in the blood. It also connects us with others and enhances social bonds. Music can even improve workout endurance and increase our enjoyment of challenging activities.
The fact that music can make a difficult task more tolerable may be why students often choose to listen to it while doing their homework or studying for exams. But is listening to music the smart choice for students who want to optimize their learning?
A new study by Manuel Gonzalez of Baruch College and John Aiello of Rutgers University suggests that for some students, listening to music is indeed a wise strategy, but for others, it is not. The effect of music on cognitive functioning appears not to be “one-size-fits-all” but to instead depend, in part, on your personality—specifically, on your need for external stimulation. People with a high requirement for such stimulation tend to get bored easily and to seek out external input. Those individuals often do worse, paradoxically, when listening to music while engaging in a mental task. People with a low need for external stimulation, on the other hand, tend to improve their mental performance with music.
But other factors play a role as well. Gonzalez and Aiello took a fairly sophisticated approach to understanding the influence of music on intellectual performance, assessing not only listener personality but also manipulating the difficulty of the task and the complexity of the music. Whether students experience a perk or a penalty from music depends on the interplay of the personality of the learner, the mental task, and the music.
In the study, participants first completed the Boredom Proneness Scale, which is a personality test used to determine need for external stimulation. They then engaged in an easy cognitive task (searching for the letter A in lists of words) and a more challenging one (remembering word pairs). To control for practice and fatigue effects, half of the subjects completed the easy task first, while the other half completed the challenging one first. Participants finished both tasks under one of three sound conditions: (a) no music, (b) simple music or (c) complex music. All of the music was instrumental, and music complexity was manipulated by varying the number of instruments involved in the piece. Simple music included piano, strings and synthesizer, while complex music added drums and bass to the simple piece.
The data suggest that your decision to turn music on (or off) while studying should depend on your personality. For those with a high need of external stimulation, listening to music while learning is not wise, especially if the task is hard and/or the music is complex. On the simple task of finding A’s, such subjects’ scores for the music condition were the same (for simple music) or significantly worse (for complex music) than those for the silent condition. On the complex task of learning word pairs, their performance was worse whenever music was played, regardless of whether it was simple or complex.
For those with a low need of external stimulation, however, listening to music is generally the optimal choice. On the simple task of findings A’s, such participants’ scores for the music condition were the same (for simple music) or dramatically better (for complex music) than those for the silent condition. On the complex task of learning word pairs, the participants showed a small but reliable benefit with both simple and complex music, relative to silence.
The results suggest that there are substantial individual differences in the impact of music on cognitive function, and thus recommendations regarding its presence in the classroom, study hall or work environment may need to be personalized. Students who are easily bored and who seek out stimulation should be wary of adding music to the mix, especially complex music that may capture attention and consume critical cognitive resources that are needed for successful task completion. On the other hand, students with a low need for stimulation may benefit significantly from the presence of music, especially when completing simple, mundane tasks.
All of the music used in the present study was instrumental, and lyrical music will likely be more complex. Complexity appears to increase arousal, and the Yerkes-Dodson law suggests that a moderate level of arousal produces optimal performance. When there is too little or too much arousal, performance drops. Thus, the benefits of music for those with a low need for external stimulation that were observed here could diminish or even disappear with the added complexity of lyrics.
Similarly, increases in the complexity of a cognitive task might also reduce or eliminate the benefit of music. Although the “complex” task used in this study (learning word pairs) was only moderately challenging, the increase in complexity, relative to the simple task, was enough to reduce music’s positive effect. With a highly challenging cognitive task (e.g., text comprehension or exam preparation), even those with a low need for external stimulation may fail to show such an effect with music.
With the right (low-need-for-stimulation) personality, the right (instrumental) music and the right (low-to-moderately-difficult) task, the presence of music may significantly improve cognitive functioning. Given the many other physical, emotional and psychological benefits of music, that subscription to Spotify just might pay for itself!
Source: Scientific American
【人文科学-音乐】 Music May Orchestrate Better Brain Connectivity in Preterm Infants （329字 2分38秒 精听 必做篇）
先做精听再核对原文哦~
Fifteen million babies are born prematurely every year, worldwide. In some cases, the early births can be life-threatening—or cause developmental issues.
"They have more attention-deficit difficulties. They can have a higher risk of having autism, and in general socio-emotional regulation issues." Petra Hüppi, a pediatrician and neonatologist at the University Hospital of Geneva.
Now, she and her colleagues have evidence that a simple tool could help those preterm babies' brains develop: music. But before you cue the Amadeus:
"When I thought about Mozart, I thought, this is a very complex musical structure and I could hardly imagine that such an immature brain would be able to fully capture the complexity of Mozart."
So instead, she recruited the harpist Andreas Vollenweider, who worked with neonatal nurses to determine which sounds would most stimulate infants' brains. He then composed a suite of three eight-minute-long tracks, which the nurses played to 20 preterm babies using wireless headphones embedded in little baby caps. Each baby heard five tracks a week for about six weeks on average.
Then Hüppi's team used MRIs to visualize activity in the babies' brains, and what they found was that preemies who listened to tunes had brain networks that more closely resembled those of full-term babies compared to their counterparts who didn't get the treatment. The music listeners had greater connectivity among brain regions, such as areas involved in sensory and higher-order cognitive functions—indicating that music listening might have enduring effects on brain development.
The details are in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Of course, many questions still remain. “How much should they listen to that? Was the music given in the right way? Would it be much better if it was something more lively than recorded music? Was it too simple? Could it be more complex?"
But Hüppi said one thing parents can already do is sing to their children. Plus, she said, it doesn't really matter if you can carry a tune.
Source: Scientific American
【笔记格式要求】
精读笔记格式要求： 1.总结文章中心大意 2.总结分论点或每段段落大意 3.摘抄印象深刻或者觉得优美的句子 4.总结文章中的生词 5.记录阅读时间、总结时间、总时间
精听笔记格式要求： 1.逐句听写整篇文章 2.对照原文修改听写稿，标记出错原因 3.总结文章中心大意 4.总结精听过程中的生词 5.记录听写时间、总结时间、总时间
这里也给大家两点学习小建议哦~ 精读：如遇到读不懂的复杂句，建议找出句子主干，分析句子成分，也可以尝试翻译句子来帮助理解~ 精听：建议每句不要反复纠结听，如果听 5 遍都没听出来，那就跳过，等完成后再回听总结原因，时间宝贵，不要过于执着哦~
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发表于 2020-6-27 20:31:17
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