Arts and the Psychological Growth of Adolescents Independent School Magazine 2004

If there were a surefire way to improve your brain, would yous endeavour it? Judging by the affluence of products, programs and pills that claim to offering "cognitive enhancement," many people are lining upwardly for just such quick brain fixes. Recent research offers a possibility with much better, science-based support: that focused training in any of the arts—such equally music, dance or theater—strengthens the brain's attending system, which in turn can amend cognition more than generally. Furthermore, this strengthening likely helps explain the effects of arts preparation on the brain and cognitive performance that take been reported in several scientific studies, such as those presented in May 2009 at a neuroeducation summit at Johns Hopkins Academy (co-sponsored by the Dana Foundation).

We know that the brain has a system of neural pathways defended to attention. We know that training these attention networks improves general measures of intelligence. And we can exist fairly certain that focusing our attention on learning and performing an art—if we do frequently and are truly engaged—activates these same attention networks. We therefore would expect focused training in the arts to better cognition generally.

Some may construe this statement as a bold associative jump, merely it's grounded in solid scientific discipline. The linchpin in this equation is the attending system. Attending plays a crucial role in learning and memory, and its importance in cognitive performance is undisputed. If you actually want to learn something, pay attention! We all know this intuitively, and plenty of strong scientific data back it up.

The idea that grooming in the arts improves cognition generally really is not and so bold within the context of what nosotros call activity-dependent plasticity, a bones tenet of encephalon role. Information technology means that the brain changes in response to what yous practise. Put another way, behavior shapes and sculpts encephalon networks: What you practice in your day-to-twenty-four hour period life is reflected in the wiring patterns of your encephalon and the efficiency of your encephalon's networks. Mayhap nowhere is this more evident than in your attention networks.^ane

For nearly of us, if we find an art that "works" for us—that incites our passion and engages u.s.a. wholeheartedly—and we stick with it, we should observe improvements in other cerebral areas in which attention is important, such as learning and memory, as well as improving cognition in general.

Solid Data Begin to Sally

If our hypothesis is true, why have scientists been unable to nail down a cause-and-effect relationship betwixt arts pedagogy and cognition—for example, "[10] amount of training in fine art form [Y] leads to a [Z] percentage increment in IQ scores"? Such a relationship is difficult to confirm scientifically because there are so many variables at piece of work; scientists have only begun to look at this relationship in a systematic, rigorous fashion.

Early on tests of the idea that the arts can heave brainpower focused on the and then-called "Mozart effect." A letter published in 1993 in the periodical Nature held that college students exposed to classical music had improved spatial reasoning skills,² which are of import to success in math and science. This observation set off a wave of marketing hype that continues to this day. Despite numerous efforts, nevertheless, scientists take not reliably replicated the phenomenon. Nonetheless, these studies  accept involved only brief periods of exposure to music, rather than explicit musical training or practice.

More recent attempts to link arts grooming with general improvements in cognition accept relied on a different approach. Researchers have focused on longer periods of engaged participation and practice in arts training rather than unproblematic exposure to music. For example, in 2004, E. Glenn Schellenberg of the University of Toronto at Mississauga published results from a randomized, controlled report showing that the IQ scores of 72 children who were enrolled in a yearlong music grooming program increased significantly compared with 36 children who received no training and 36 children who took drama lessons. (The IQ scores of children taking drama lessons did not increase, but these children did improve more than the other groups on ratings of selected social skills.)³

In a report published in the Periodical of Neuroscience in March 2009, researchers Ellen Winner of Boston College, Gottfried Schlaug of Harvard Academy and their colleagues at McGill University used neuroimaging scans to examine brain changes in young children who underwent a 4-year-long music training program, compared with a command group of children who did not receive music training.⁴ In the first round of testing, after 15 months, the researchers institute structural changes in brain circuits involved in music processing in the children who received training. They did not find the same changes in the control grouping. The scientists also institute improvements in musically relevant motor and auditory skills, a phenomenon called near transfer.  In this example, the improvements did not transfer to measures of cognition less related to music—termed far transfer.  We do not know why far transfer to IQ, for example was institute in the Schellenberg report and not in this ane.

Taken every bit a whole, the findings to engagement tell u.s. that music training tin can indeed alter brain circuitry and, in at to the lowest degree some circumstances, can improve general cognition. But they leave unsettled the question of under what circumstances training in 1 cerebral area reliably transfers to improvements in other cerebral skills. From our perspective, the key to transfer is diligence: Practicing for long periods of time and in an absorbed way can cause changes in more the specific brain network related to the skill. Sustained focus tin can also produce stronger and more efficient attention networks, and these key networks in turn affect cognitive skills more mostly.

Fig. ane. The practice of various art forms involves different sensory and motor areas in the brain. (Courtesy of M. Posner.)

Practicing a skill, either in the arts or in other areas, builds a rich repertoire of information related to the skill. Scientists conducting neuroimaging studies of many human tasks have identified networks of widely scattered neural structures that act together to perform a given skill, which may involve sensory, motor, attentional, emotional and language processes. The arts are no exception: Specific encephalon networks underlie specific fine art forms, every bit illustrated in Effigy 1. As nosotros practice a task, its underlying network becomes more efficient, and connections among encephalon areas that perform dissimilar aspects of the task become more tightly integrated.

This procedure is coordinating to an orchestra playing a symphony. The music that results from the integration of orchestral sections is likely to sound more than fluid the hundredth time they play a slice than the showtime time.

Training Attention Networks

A large body of scientific testify shows that repeated activation of the encephalon'southward attending networks increases their efficiency. Neuroimaging studies have besides proved that the following specialized neural networks underlie various aspects of attention¹ (meet Figure 2):

• the alerting network, which enables the brain to achieve and maintain an alarm state;

• the orienting network, which keeps the encephalon attuned to external events in our environment;

• the executive attention network, which helps us control our emotions and choose among conflicting thoughts in society to focus on goals over long periods of time.

I have been especially interested in the executive attention network. Executive attention skills, especially the abilities to command emotions and to focus thoughts (sometimes called cerebral control), are critical aspects of social and academic success throughout childhood. Empathy toward others, the ability to control reward-motivated impulses and even control of the propensity to cheat or prevarication have been linked scientifically to aspects of executive attention.⁵ Researchers also accept shown that measures of this network's efficiency are related to school performance.^vi

Fig. 2. Brain networks that underlie different aspects of attention include the alerting network, the orienting network and the executive attention network. Arts learning may contribute to improved cognition by improving the efficiency of the executive attention network. (Courtesy of Thousand. Posner.)

Given the importance of the executive attending network, my colleagues and I wondered what might improve its efficiency. To find out, we adapted a series of exercises, originally designed to train monkeys for space travel, to investigate the effects of attention-preparation exercises in four- to vi-year-erstwhile children. We randomly assigned the children to either a control status (which involved watching and responding to interactive videos) or training on joystick-operated reckoner exercises designed to engage attention networks through motivation and reward (see the paradigm at superlative right). Later the children who did the computer exercises participated in 5 days of training for about 30 minutes per day, we placed noninvasive electrodes  on the children's  scalp to await at their brain activity; we plant evidence of increased efficiency in the executive attention network. The experimental group'south network operation, in dissimilarity to the command group's, resembled performance in adults. Importantly, this comeback transferred to higher scores on IQ tests designed for young children.

These data suggest that increasing the efficiency of the executive attention network also improves general knowledge every bit measured past IQ.^vii Grand. Rosario Rueda of the University of Granada, Spain, and colleagues subsequently replicated this key finding in an as yet unpublished written report of Spanish children. Rueda found that attending training improved the children's abilities to delay reward, and the improvements persisted for at least two months after training.

In recent years, diverse approaches to preparation children to pay attention accept been carried out in many different settings. The results show that tasks specifically designed to exercise the underlying networks can indeed meliorate attending, and that this kind of training can translate to ameliorate general cognition. In 1 of the strongest studies to support this finding, measures of cognitive control significantly improved in preschoolers enrolled in a yearlong training program that incorporated dissimilar activities designed to sharpen executive functions.⁸ We wait that this grooming volition positively affect the children'due south future academic performance, but this remains to be shown.

For many children, interest in a particular fine art form leads to sustained attention when practicing that art course. Moreover, engaging in art frequently involves resolving conflicts among competing possible responses, such as when choosing the correct note to play at a given moment. The ability to resolve conflict amongst competing responses is also a crucial aspect of attention preparation. For case, if you are to respond to a target arrow by pressing a key in the direction in which the arrowhead points, the addition of surrounding arrows pointing in the opposite management will increase your reaction time and actuate parts of the executive attending network.⁸ We wait, therefore, that  arts training should exercise the executive attention network and, therefore, also should improve cognition by and large.

One Size Doesn't Fit All

It seems unlikely that training in the arts will always improve general cognition, however, since so many factors are at play. No single art form is interesting to all people, and some people may never warm upwardly to any blazon of fine art. Private differences in relevant brain networks, which are probably genetically influenced to some degree, aid explicate this variability in both appreciation of and power to create art. For example, one person may have an auditory system that hands discriminates between tones and a motor arrangement optimized for fine finger control, which may predispose her to playing a instrument. Someone with agility, coordination and a good ability to imitate motions of others, on the other hand, might naturally gravitate toward dance or sports. These differences may besides aid explain why people are passionate most one blazon of art but non others.

The efficacy of arts preparation also depends on a child'southward temperament or personality. For case, openness, which affects behavior, may exist a prerequisite to constructive training, and may in part be genetically derived. We have institute, for instance, that a gene that regulates the manual of the chemical dopamine from one brain jail cell to another appears to modulate children's openness to parental influence. Our studies show that children with one form of this gene (the dopamine-iv receptor cistron) evidence abnormally high sensation-seeking behavior if their parents bear witness poor parenting skills, only not if their parents testify expert parenting skills.^nine,10

An increasing body of evidence indicates that the brain'south attention networks are also nether some degree of genetic control. For example, certain genes seem to attune an individual'south ability to perform attending-related tasks, such as rapidly responding to a warning betoken or shifting attention from ane external outcome to another. These genetic influences underscore individual differences in responses to training, and they may explicate contradictory results in scientific studies investigating the links between arts training and cognition.

Apart from these caveats, exposure to the "right" art course can fully engage children'south attention and can exist highly rewarding for them. They may go so involved in learning the art that they lose track of time or even "lose themselves" while practicing information technology. I believe that few other schoolhouse subjects can produce such strong and sustained attention that is at once rewarding and motivating. That is why arts training is peculiarly appealing equally a potential means for improving noesis. Other engaging subjects might be useful too, but the arts may be unique in that so many children accept a strong involvement in them.

With advances in neuroscience that are providing important new tools for studying noesis, it is of import for researchers to work with educators to design and behave out studies that build upon the findings that arts grooming provides near-transfer effects, and make up one's mind whether this grooming also results in—and causes—far-transfer cerebral benefits. Every bit we have seen, recent studies accept transcended the failed image of only exposing people to the arts, and now concentrate on the effects of arts training over months and years. We need more studies like these to determine whether, beyond strong correlation, causation occurs. Arts training may influence cognition through other brain processes as well. Because arts preparation strengthens the encephalon network related to the art being practiced, other tasks that rely on the same brain circuitry or pieces of it presumably would be affected.  For instance, if music grooming influences the auditory system, we might also await to come across improvement in nonmusical tasks involving pitch In fact, Brian Wandell and his colleagues at Stanford University recently demonstrated that children who train in music or the visual arts showed improved phonological awareness, the power to manipulate speech communication sounds, which is strongly tied to reading fluency.  Moreover, the more music grooming they had, the improve their reading fluency.¹¹

In addition, parts of the music network lie adjacent to brain areas involved in processing numbers, which might explain anecdotal reports of improvements in mathematics afterward music preparation. For instance, Elizabeth Spelke of Harvard University has establish that  schoolhouse-historic period children engaged in intensive music training had  improved performance in abstruse geometry tasks.¹² Wandell and his squad also reported preliminary data connecting feel in the visual arts with children'due south math calculation abilities.¹³ Hereafter studies will need to examine these possibilities in more detail.

Some other interesting aspect of the performing arts is that artists ofttimes prepare for their work by consciously entering a state of heed that they believe will elevate their performance, for case, via deep breathing, picturing the moment or other meditative techniques. Yi-Yuan Tang, a visiting professor at the University of Oregon from Dalian Medical University in China,  recently reported that some forms of meditation can produce changes in the connection between the brain and the parasympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system and, after simply a few days of training, can pb to improvements in the same aspects of executive attention that are trained by specifically exercising this network.¹⁴ This "attention state" also correlates with improved mood and resistance to stress. Our data suggest that meditation may contribute to generalized cognitive improvements in those who practice information technology.

The growing body of scientific work that suggests arts grooming tin improve cognitive function—including our view, which identifies stronger attending networks every bit the mechanism—opens a new avenue of study for cognitive researchers. The new research findings as well give parents and educators 1 more than reason to encourage young people to notice an art form they love and to pursue it with passion. Continuing research in this area can also assist inform ongoing debates about the value of arts pedagogy, which has important policy implications given budgetary pressures to cut arts programs from school curricula.

From our perspective, it is increasingly clear that with enough focused attention, training in the arts likely yields cognitive benefits that go across "fine art for art's sake." Or, to put it another manner, the art form that you truly beloved to larn may also lead to improvements in other brain functions.

References

1. M. I. Posner and M. One thousand. Rothbart, "Research on Attention Networks as a Model for the Integration of Psychological Science," Annual Review of Psychology 58 (2007): one–23.
2. F. H. Rauscher, M. L. Shaw, and C. North. Ky, "Music and Spatial Task Performance," Nature 365 (1993): 611.
3. E. Yard. Schellenberg, "Music Lessons Heighten IQ," Psychological Science 15 (2004): 511–514.
4. K. Fifty. Hyde, J. Lerch, A. Norton, M. Forgeard, E. Winner, A. C. Evans, and Grand. Schlaug, "Musical Training Shapes Structural Brain Development," Periodical of Neuroscience 29 (2009): 3019–3025.
5. Thousand. R. Rueda, M. I. Posner, and G. Chiliad. Rothbart, "Attentional Command and Self Regulation" in Handbook of Cocky Regulation: Inquiry, Theory, and Applications, ed. R. F. Baumeister and K. D. Vohs, 283–300 (New York: Guilford Printing, 2004).
6. P. Checa, R. Rodriguez-Bailon, and M. R. Rueda, "Neurocognitive and Temperamental Systems of Early Self-Regulation and Early Adolescents' Social and Academic Outcomes," Listen Brain and Education ii (2008): 177–187.
7. M. R. Rueda, 1000. Yard. Rothbart, B. D. McCandliss, L. Saccomanno, and M. I. Posner, "Training, Maturation and Genetic Influences on the Development of Executive Attention," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 102 (2005): 4931–4936.
8. J. Fan, J.I. Flombaum, B.D. McCandliss, K.M. Thomas, and M.I. Posner, "Cognitive and Brain Consequences of Conflict," Neuro Prototype xviii (2003): 42–57.
9. A. Diamond, S. Barnett, J. Thomas, and Southward. Munro, "Preschool Programme Improves Cognitive Control," Scientific discipline 318 (2007): 1387–1388.
10. B. E. Sheese, M. Pascale, Chiliad. Voelker, M. K. Rothbart, and M. I. Posner, "Parenting Quality Interacts with Genetic Variation in Dopamine Receptor D4 to Influence Temperament in Early Childhood," Development and Psychopathology nineteen, no. 4 (2007): 1039–1046.
11. G. A. Bryant and H. C. Barrett, "Recognizing Intentions in Infant-directed Speech communication: Bear witness for Universals," Psychological Science 18, no. eight (2007): 746–751.
12. B. Wandell, R. Dougherty, Thousand. Ben-Shachar, G. Deutsch, and J. Tsang, "Training in the Arts, Reading, and Brain Imaging," Learning, Arts, and the Encephalon: The Dana Consortium Report 51-59.
13. E. Spelke, "Effects of Music Didactics on Developing Cerebral Systems at the Foundations of Math and Science," Learning, Arts, and the Brain: The Dana Consortium Report 17-49.
14. Y Tang, Y.Ma, Y Fan, H. Feng, J. Wang, South.Feng, Q.Lu, B. Hu, Y. Lin, J.Li, Y.Zhang, Y.Wang, L Zhou, and M. Fan, "Cardinal and Autonomic Nervous System Interaction is Altered by Short Term Meditation, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science 106(2009): 8865–8870.

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Source: https://www.dana.org/article/how-arts-training-improves-attention-and-cognition/

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