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Monthly Archives: February 2018

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Do Musicians Really Have Better Memories?
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson
February-05-2018

Do Musicians Really Have Better Memories?

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musician memory

Here’s a provocative claim for you: “musicians have better memories than non-musicians.”

But, do we have research to support that claim?

According to a meta-analysis published back in October of 2017, the answer is: “mostly yes.”

What do we know about musician memory?

Reseachers in Padua, Italy examined 29 different memory studies, sorting them into categories of long-term, short-term, and working memory.

In all three categories, musician memory averaged higher on various tests than non-musician memory. (They defined “musician” as someone who had enrolled in a conservatory or music school, and “non-musician” as someone who had little musical training.)

The effect size was “small” for long-term memory, and “moderate” for short-term and working memory.

(For the stats pros in the house, Hedges’s g was 0.29 for LTM, 0.57 for STM, and 0.56 for WM.)

The Plot Thickens

Of course, the story gets more complex. After all, we have different ways of testing these memory skills.

So, for example, we might test people on their ability to remember musical tones. In that case, it’s not at all surprising that musicians have better memory.

But when we test their verbal ability, or their visuo-spatial ability, what do we find?

In long-term memory, it’s all the same. Musicians consistently have (slightly) higher scores than non-musicians.

For short-term memory and working memory, these tests matter. In verbal tests, musicians’ STM and WM still average higher, but not as much as overall. In visuo-spatial tests, the differences basically vanishes.

How to explain these differences?

It’s not surprising that music training might help with verbal capacities. Our ability to process and read language does depend significantly on our ability to process tone and rhythm.

However, music isn’t so directly related to processing of spatial information, and so might not provide enough training to make a difference.

How do we interpret these differences?

Before we conclude that music training causes better memory, we should consider an alternative explanation. Perhaps music requires better memory, and so only those with very good memory skills ever enroll in a conservatory.

If that explanation isn’t true, then we arrive at a surprising conclusion: just maybe it IS possible to train working memory.

Regular readers of this blog know that there’s a lot of skepticism about WM training programs. They’re often expensive and time consuming, and don’t consistently produce results outside of the psychology lab.

It would be thrilling to know that music lessons not only help people make music, but also boost this essential cognitive capacity.

At the same time, we should keep two cautions in mind.

First: it takes A LOT of music training to get into conservatory. People with WM difficulties just might not have that much extra time.

Second: this study doesn’t show that music training leads to greater learning of, say, math and reading. When we worry about students’ working memory, we typically want them to make greater progress in disciplines such as these.

Last Notes

These cautions aside, this study seems like wonderful news. Creating music is good for the soul. And, studying music just might be good for our memory systems as well.

Motivating Retrieval Practice: Money Doesn’t Help
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson
February-03-2018

Motivating Retrieval Practice: Money Doesn’t Help

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Brain Chalkboard_CreditGiven all the benefits that come from retrieval practice, we should surely encourage our students to use this technique as much as possible. How can we best motivate them to do so?

Three researchers in Europe offer this answer: subtly.

More specifically, their research finds that offering students extrinsic rewards for their retrieval practice reduced its effectiveness.

Students offered rewards made more mistakes when they first tried to recall information, and–even taking those initial errors into account–remembered less than their fellow students who had received no enticement to practice.

In this study, the extrinsic rewards were cash payments: students received a euro for every correct answer. In schools, we rarely pay students money to get correct answers. However, we quite often pay them with grades.

This study suggests that retrieval practice should–as much as possible–come in the form of very-low-stakes or no-stakes retrieval.

Top Neuroscience Stories of 2017, Wisely Annotated
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson
February-01-2018

Top Neuroscience Stories of 2017, Wisely Annotated

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AdobeStock_137247812_Credit

NeuroscienceNews.com has published its “Top 20 Neuroscience Stories of 2017,” and the list provides helpful — and sometimes surprising — insight into current brain research.

Taken together, these stories add up to 5 important headlines.

Headline 1: Neuroscience can tell us such cool stuff!

Gosh darnit: people who swear more are more likely to be honest, and less likely to be deceptive. Dad gummity.

If music literally gives you chills, you might have unusual levels of connectivity between your auditory cortex and emotional processing centers.

People with very high IQs (above 130) are more prone to anxiety than others.

A double hand transplant (!) leads to remarkable levels of brain rewiring (!).

Forests can help your amygdala develop, especially if you live near them.

When you look a baby in the eyes, your brain waves just might be synchronizing.

Headline 2: Your gut is your “second brain”

Amazingly, fully one quarter of the 20 top stories focus on the connection between the brain and the digestive system. For example:

  • Traumatic Brain Injury Causes Intestinal Damage
  • Research Suggests Connection between Gut Bacteria and Emotion
  • New Light on Link between Gut Bacteria and Anxiety
  • Your Mood Depends on the Food You Eat
  • Gut Microbes May Talk to the Brain through Cortisol

This “aha” moment — our guts and our brains are deeply interconnected! — happens over and over, and yet hasn’t fully been taken on board in the teaching and understanding of neuroscience.

Teachers should watch this research pool. It will, over the years, undoubtedly be increasingly helpful in our work.

Headline 3: Neuroscience and psychology disagree about definitions of ADHD

A psychologist diagnoses ADHD by looking at behavior and using the DSM V.

If a student shows a particular set of behaviors over time, and if they interfere with her life, then that psychologist gives a diagnosis.

However, a 2017 study suggests that these ADHD behaviors might be very different in their underlying neural causes.

Think of it this way. I might have chest pains because of costochondritis — inflammation of cartilage around the sternum. Or I might have chest paints because I’m having a heart attack.

It’s really important to understand the underlying causes so we get the treatment right.

The same just might be true for ADHD. If the surface symptoms are the same, but the underlying neural causes are different, we might need differing treatments for students with similar behavior.

By the way, the same point is true for anxiety and depression.

Headline 4: Each year we learn more about brain disorders

Alzheimer’s might result, in part, from bacteria in the brain. Buildup of urea might result in dementia. Impaired production of myelin might lead to schizophrenia. Oxidative stress might result in migraines.

Remarkably, an immune system disorder might be mistaken for schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. (Happily, that immune system problem can be treated.)

Headline 5: For teachers, neuroscience is fascinating; psychology is useful

If you’re like me, you first got into Learning and the Brain conferences because the brain — the physical object — is utterly fascinating.

You want to know about neurons and synapses and the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex and the ventral tegmental area. (Ok, maybe not so much with the ventral tegmental area.)

Over all these years, I’ve remained fascinated by neuroscience. At the same time, I’ve come to understand that it rarely offers teachers concrete advice.

Notice: of the twenty headlines summarized above, only one of them really promises anything specific to teachers. If that ADHD study pans out, we might get all sorts of new ideas about diagnosing and treating students who struggle with attention in school.

The other 19 stories? They really don’t offer us much that’s practical.

The world of psychology, however, has all sorts of specific classroom suggestions for teachers. How to manage working memory overload? To foster attention? To promote motivation?

Psychology has concrete answers to all these questions.

And so, I encourage you to look over these articles because they broaden our understanding of brains and of neuroscience. For specific teaching advice, keep your eyes peeled for “the top 20 psychology stories of 2017.”

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