Imprisonment: Young Pacific womens' experiences of living with depression

<p>Research has shown that depression is prevalent in adolescence. This descriptive phenomenological study explored the lived experiences of young Pacific Island (PI) women (17-25 years of age) living in New Zealand. Phenomenological interviewing was used to capture the lived experiences of depression with the aim of developing a deeper understanding of what it is like to be a young depressed PI woman. The essence of being depressed was imprisonment. Young PI women described how family and cultural pressures, experiences of failure and abuse led to their depression. They experienced rejection, being labelled, misunderstood and silenced by others and their circumstances and depression trapped them. The women managed their depression by finding their voice in writing journals, listening to music, reading bible scriptures, prayer and connecting to others with similar lived experience. The implications of the study are discussed in relation to improving parent education and culturally relevant support for young PI women. Recommendations for future research include developing approaches to research that include a more specific cultural and gender focus.</p>

Imprisonment: Young Pacific womens' experiences of living with depression

<p>Research has shown that depression is prevalent in adolescence. This descriptive phenomenological study explored the lived experiences of young Pacific Island (PI) women (17-25 years of age) living in New Zealand. Phenomenological interviewing was used to capture the lived experiences of depression with the aim of developing a deeper understanding of what it is like to be a young depressed PI woman. The essence of being depressed was imprisonment. Young PI women described how family and cultural pressures, experiences of failure and abuse led to their depression. They experienced rejection, being labelled, misunderstood and silenced by others and their circumstances and depression trapped them. The women managed their depression by finding their voice in writing journals, listening to music, reading bible scriptures, prayer and connecting to others with similar lived experience. The implications of the study are discussed in relation to improving parent education and culturally relevant support for young PI women. Recommendations for future research include developing approaches to research that include a more specific cultural and gender focus.</p>

EXPRESS: Music-reading expertise associates with face but not Chinese character processing ability

A growing number of behavioral and neuroimaging studies have investigated the cognitive mechanisms and neural substrates underlying various forms of visual expertise such as face and word processing. However, it remains poorly understood whether and to what extent the acquisition of one form of expertise would be associated with that of another. The current study examined the relationship between music-reading expertise and face and Chinese character processing abilities. In a series of experiments, music experts and novices performed discrimination and recognition tasks of musical notations, faces, and words. Results consistently showed that musical experts responded more accurately to musical notations and faces, but not to words, than did musical novices. More intriguingly, the music expert’s age of training onset could well predict their face but not word processing performance: the earlier musical experts began musical notation reading, the better their face-processing performance. Taken together, our findings provide preliminary and converging evidence that music-reading expertise links with face, but not word, processing, and lend support to the notion that the development of different types of visual expertise may not be independent, but rather interact with each other during their acquisition.

Multivariate Approach to Reading Comprehension and Sight-Reading

This chapter focuses on the study of the relationship between reading of music and verbal texts and it seeks to define an ecological music reading task that allows comparison of musical and verbal domains. Participants were preservice music students who performed different music reading tasks correlated with a verbal text comprehension test. A Principal Component Analysis (PCA), was performed, explaining 91,5% of the variance. The following two axes were defined: one related to reading compression and the other to music performance variables. The relationship between the selected variables in the factorial plane, particularly the strong association between sight-reading and literal comprehension, suggest that sight-reading is a relevant factor with regards to the study of musical and verbal domains.

Seeing Red: Effects of Practice Interventions on Woodwind Students’ Accuracy in Performing Articulation

Music reading is a central part of most band programs, yet research about music reading has rarely included articulation markings. The purpose of this study was to explore the effect of four experimental practice conditions to a control condition on woodwind players’ performance of slur, accent, and staccato markings. A secondary purpose was to examine the role of working memory in performing articulation. The practice conditions used visual and kinesthetic approaches: colored notation, tracing over articulation marks, and speaking syllables. University woodwind players ( N = 26) practiced short etudes on 1 day, and they returned approximately 24 hours later for retention testing. Participants’ working memory was strongly related to playing articulation on the first day of practice. Woodwind players prioritized playing slurs over accents and staccatos, and there was some support for tracing with color to support accurate performance of articulation.

Computerized Music-Reading Intervention Improves Resistance to Unisensory Distraction Within a Multisensory Task, in Young and Older Adults

Incoming information from multiple sensory channels compete for attention. Processing the relevant ones and ignoring distractors, while at the same time monitoring the environment for potential threats, is crucial for survival, throughout the lifespan. However, sensory and cognitive mechanisms often decline in aging populations, making them more susceptible to distraction. Previous interventions in older adults have successfully improved resistance to distraction, but the inclusion of multisensory integration, with its unique properties in attentional capture, in the training protocol is underexplored. Here, we studied whether, and how, a 4-week intervention, which targets audiovisual integration, affects the ability to deal with task-irrelevant unisensory deviants within a multisensory task. Musically naïve participants engaged in a computerized music reading game and were asked to detect audiovisual incongruences between the pitch of a song’s melody and the position of a disk on the screen, similar to a simplistic music staff. The effects of the intervention were evaluated via behavioral and EEG measurements in young and older adults. Behavioral findings include the absence of age-related differences in distraction and the indirect improvement of performance due to the intervention, seen as an amelioration of response bias. An asymmetry between the effects of auditory and visual deviants was identified and attributed to modality dominance. The electroencephalographic results showed that both groups shared an increase in activation strength after training, when processing auditory deviants, located in the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. A functional connectivity analysis revealed that only young adults improved flow of information, in a network comprised of a fronto-parietal subnetwork and a multisensory temporal area. Overall, both behavioral measures and neurophysiological findings suggest that the intervention was indirectly successful, driving a shift in response strategy in the cognitive domain and higher-level or multisensory brain areas, and leaving lower level unisensory processing unaffected.

Hvordan kan kunnskap om tekstlesing og lese- og skriveopplæring i grunnskolen brukes i noteopplæring på nybegynnernivå?

How can knowledge about language learning and teaching be used to enhance the study of music reading at the beginner level? This theoretical article aims to discuss the possibility of using teaching methods for reading and writing used in Norwegian primary schools for teaching literacy for music notation to instrumental pupils at the beginner level, focusing on western tonal music. Language and music reading have much in common as cognitive processes. However, comparison of methods for teaching how to read language and music shows several fundamental differences. They relate to the emphasis on various methodological elements, progression in the introduction of new symbols and choice of the activities used in the teaching/learning process. The article describes musical and linguistic syntax, acquisition of reading skill as a cognitive activity, and compares popular method books for teaching reading text and music in Norway. In the discussion section it is argued that the teaching activities that use writing music, experiencing various elements of music as sound before introducing musical notation and introducing basic knowledge about harmony, as well as adjusting of layout in the books for beginners, will have a positive effect on sight-reading at the beginner level.

How Many Collocations do Heritage Speakers Know?

The current study examines a previously understudied dimension of heritage speakers’ lexical knowledge by focusing on verbal collocations. Two tests were designed in order to assess both receptive (recognition) and productive (recall) knowledge of sixty Spanish collocations. The collocations were divided into three types (congruent, partially congruent, and incongruent) based on a ratings survey that established their degree of correspondence with English. Participants’ language dominance and their use of Spanish in various daily activities were included as individual variables. The results indicate that the participants knew a vast majority of the collocations on the recognition test, but that their ability to recall the collocations was somewhat more limited. Congruency had a significant effect on participants’ performance, but this finding must be interpreted in light of the interaction between congruency and word frequency. Significant correlations were found between performance on both tests and language dominance, as well as a number of variables involving interaction in Spanish (text messaging) and exposure (listening to music, reading for fun). These data are discussed in relation to previous studies on the acquisition of collocations and heritage speakers’ knowledge of individual words.

Aging Effects on the Neuroplastic Attributes of Multisensory Cortical Networks as Triggered by a Computerized Music Reading Training Intervention

The constant increase in the graying population is the result of a great expansion of life expectancy. A smaller expansion of healthy cognitive and brain functioning diminishes the gains achieved by longevity. Music training, as a special case of multisensory learning, may induce restorative neuroplasticity in older ages. The current study aimed to explore aging effects on the cortical network supporting multisensory cognition and to define aging effects on the network’s neuroplastic attributes. A computer-based music reading protocol was developed and evaluated via electroencephalography measurements pre- and post-training on young and older adults. Results revealed that multisensory integration is performed via diverse strategies in the two groups: Older adults employ higher-order supramodal areas to a greater extent than lower level perceptual regions, in contrast to younger adults, indicating an age-related shift in the weight of each processing strategy. Restorative neuroplasticity was revealed in the left inferior frontal gyrus and right medial temporal gyrus, as a result of the training, while task-related reorganization of cortical connectivity was obstructed in the group of older adults, probably due to systemic maturation mechanisms. On the contrary, younger adults significantly increased functional connectivity among the regions supporting multisensory integration.