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Research Confirms That Motor And Cognitive Skills Are Improved By Hand-Clapping Songs 4/2010

Hand-clapping songs improve motor and cognitive skills

Tags: # NCFR | #Teach Reading | #Orff | #rhythm & Literacy | #rhythm syllables | #Nursery Rhymes | #Research THE BASIC BUILDING BLOCKS OF LITERACY | #Social Rhythm Researchers | #learning with laughter and play

Capture Culture Hand-clapping songs improve motor and cognitive skills.

Reading Improvement Through Music, Movement, and Play (RITMMAP): A Crossover Study

During the study, "Impact of Hand-clapping Songs on Cognitive and Motor Tasks," Dr. Edit Sulkin interviewed school and kindergarten teachers, visited their classrooms and joined the children in singing. Her original goal, as part of her thesis, was to figure out why children are fascinated by singing and clapping up until the end of third grade, when these pastimes are abruptly abandoned and replaced with sports.

#Domino Note: In 1977 children were playing these games well past 4th grade.

Dr. Idit Sulkin Research

Dr. Idit Sulkin a researcher at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) conducted the first study of hand-clapping songs, revealing a direct link between those activities and the development of important skills in children and young adults, including university students.
"We found that children in the first, second and third grades who sing these songs demonstrate skills absent in children who don't take part in similar activities," explains Dr. Idit Sulkin a member of BGU's Music Science Lab in the Department of the Arts. "We also found that children who spontaneously perform hand-clapping songs in the yard during recess have neater handwriting, write better and make fewer spelling errors."

 

Children's Songs and Clapping Games Improve Motor and Cognitive Skills

A study by Dr. Idit Sulkin, a member of the Music Science Lab in the Department of the Arts, has found a direct link between children's songs and clapping games and the development of important skills, both in children and in young adults, including university students.
Sulkin conducted the study as part of her doctoral studies in the Kreitman School of Advanced Graduate Studies under the supervision of Dr. Warren Brodsky. The study lasted for a period of five years in which by interviewing school and kindergarten teachers and visiting their classrooms, she joined the children in singing. Her original goal was to figure out why children are fascinated by singing and clapping up until the end of third grade, when these pastimes are abruptly abandoned and replaced with sport.
"This fact explains a natural evolutionary process the children are going through," she said. "The clapping and singing games appear naturally in children's lives around the age of seven, and disappear around the age of 10. In this narrow window, these activities serve as a developmental tool that reflects many of the children's needs - emotional, sociological, physiological and cognitive. It's a transition stage that leads them to the next phases of growing up." Though the relationship between music and intellectual development in children has been studied extensively - prompting countless parents to obtain a Mozart record or two for their young, just in case - Sulkin said that no in-depth study had previously been made of the effect that singing and clapping games have on children's motor and cognitive skills.
"We found that about 20 percent of children in the first, second and third grade take up these songs and demonstrate skills absent in children who don't take part in such activities," she said. "We found that children who clap and sing write better, with fewer spelling errors and nicer handwriting. Their teachers also believe their social integration is better than that of children who don't take part in these games." As part of the study, Sulkin went to several elementary school classrooms and engaged the children in singing and clapping activities over a period of 10 weeks. "Within a very short period of time, the children who until then hadn't taken part in such activities caught up in their cognitive abilities to those who did," she said. This finding led Sulkin to conclude that singing and clapping games should be made an integral part of education for children aged six to 10, for the purpose of motor and cognitive training.
She also found that singing and clapping games have a clear effect on adults: University students who filled out her questionnaires reported that after taking up such games, they became more focused and less tense. "These techniques are associated with childhood, and many adults treat them as a joke," she said, "But once they take them up, they report feeling more alert and in a better mood."
Sulkin grew up in a musical home: Her father, Adi Sulkin, collected and published children's songs in the 1970s. "So quite apart from the research experience, working on this was like a second childhood," she noted. Dr. Warren Brodsky, the music psychologist who supervised her thesis work, said Sulkin's findings lead to the presumption that "children who don't participate in such games are more exposed to problems like dyslexia and dyscalculia. There's no doubt such activities train the brain and influence development in other areas."

Hand Jive

 

Study: Children's songs, clapping games improve motor and cognitive skilLS
By Yuval Azoulay
Children's songs and clapping games can develop a person's motor and cognitive skills even long after childhood, a recent Israeli study suggests.

Solkin conducted the study over a period of five years by interviewing school and kindergarten teachers and visiting their classrooms, where she joined the children in singing. Her original goal was to figure out why children are fascinated by singing and clapping up until the end of third grade, when these pastimes are abruptly abandoned and replaced with sport.
"This fact explains a natural evolutionary process the children are going through," she said. "The clapping and singing games appear naturally in children's lives around the age of seven, and disappear around the age of 10. In this narrow window, these activities serve as a developmental tool that reflects many of the children's needs - emotional, sociological, physiological and cognitive. It's a transition stage that leads them to the next phases of growing up."
Though the relationship between music and intellectual development in children has been studied extensively - prompting countless parents to obtain a Mozart record or two for their young, just in case - Solkin said that no in-depth study had previously been made of the effect that singing and clapping games have on children's motor and cognitive skills.
"We found that about 20 percent of children in the first, second and third grade take up these songs and demonstrate skills absent in children who don't take part in such activities," she said. "We found that children who clap and sing write better, with fewer spelling errors and nicer handwriting. Their teachers also believe their social integration is better than that of children who don't take part in these games."
As part of the study, Solkin went to several elementary school classrooms and engaged the children in singing and clapping activities over a period of 10 weeks. "Within a very short period of time, the children who until then hadn't taken part in such activities caught up in their cognitive abilities to those who did," she said.
This finding led Solkin to conclude that singing and clapping games should be made an integral part of education for children aged six to 10, for the purpose of motor and cognitive training.
She also found that singing and clapping games have a clear effect on adults: University students who filled out her questionnaires reported that after taking up such games, they became more focused and less tense.
"These techniques are associated with childhood, and many adults treat them as a joke," she said. "But once they take them up, they report feeling more alert and in a better mood."
Solkin grew up in a musical home: Her father, Adi Solkin, collected and published children's songs in the 1970s. "So quite apart from the research experience, working on this was like a second childhood," she noted.
The study was conducted for her doctoral thesis. Dr. Warren Brodsky, a music psychologist who supervised her thesis work, said Solkin's findings lead to the presumption that "children who don't participate in such games are more exposed to problems like dyslexia and dyscalculia. There's no doubt such activities train the brain and influence development in other areas."
The study, by Dr. Idit Solkin of Ben-Gurion University's arts faculty, found a direct link between children's songs and clapping games and the development of important skills, both in children and in young adults, including university students.

Sing, clap hands for better cognitive and motor skills

Research reveals direct link between certain activities and development skills.

Everyone likes to be on the receiving end of applause. But Ben-Gurion University of the Negev researchers have found that giving it - especially while singing at a young age - can promote the development of important skills needed as children and even young adults. Dr. Idit Sulkin, who wrote her doctoral thesis on the first-ever study of hand-clapping songs, revealed a direct link between those activities and development skills.
“We found that children in the first, second and third grades who sing these songs demonstrate skills absent in children who don't take part in similar activities,” said Sulkin, now a member of BGU's music science lab in the department of the arts, this week. “We also found that children who spontaneously perform hand-clapping songs in the yard during recess have neater handwriting, write better and make fewer spelling errors.”
Dr. Warren Brodsky, the music psychologist who supervised her doctoral dissertation, said Sulkin's findings lead to the presumption that “children who don't participate in such games may be more at risk of developmental learning problems like dyslexia [reading difficulties] and dyscalculia [problems with arithmetical calculations]. There's no doubt such activities train the brain and influence development in other areas. The children's teachers also believe that social integration is better among these children than among those who don't take part in these songs.”
As part of the study, Sulkin went to several elementary school classrooms and engaged the children in either an Education Ministry-sanctioned music appreciation program or hand-clapping song training - each lasting a period of 10 weeks.
“Within a very short period of time, the children who until then hadn't taken part in such activities caught up in their cognitive abilities with those who did,” she said. But this finding only surfaced in the group of children undergoing hand-clapping song training. The result led Sulkin to conclude that hand-clapping songs should be made an integral part of education for children aged six to 10 for the purpose of motor and cognitive training.
During the study, titled “Impact of Hand-clapping Songs on Cognitive and Motor Tasks,” Sulkin interviewed school and kindergarten teachers, visited their classrooms and joined the children in singing. Her original goal, as part of her thesis, was to figure out why children are fascinated by singing and clapping up until the end of third grade, when these pastimes are abruptly abandoned and replaced by sports.
“This fact explains a developmental process the children are going through,” Sulkin observed. “The hand-clapping songs appear naturally in children's lives around the age of seven and disappear around the age of 10. In this narrow window, these activities serve as a developmental platform to enhance children's needs - emotional, sociological, physiological and cognitive. It's a transitional stage that leads them to the next phase of growing up.”
Sulkin says that no in-depth, long-term study has been conducted on the effects of hand-clapping songs on children's motor and cognitive skills. However, the relationship between music and intellectual development in children has been studied extensively, prompting countless parents to obtain Baby Mozart CDs for their tots.
She also found that hand-clapping song activity has a positive effect on adults: University students who filled out her questionnaires reported that after taking up such games, they became more focused and less tense.
“These techniques are associated with childhood, and many adults treat them as a joke,” Sulkin said. “But once they start clapping, they report feeling more alert and in a better mood.”
Sulkin grew up in a musical home; her father, Dr. Adi Sulkin, is a well-known music educator, who in the 1970s and 1980s recorded and published over 50 cassettes and videos depicting Israeli children's play songs, street songs and holiday and seasonal songs, as well as singing games that targeted academic skills. “So quite apart from the research experience, working on this was like a second childhood,” Sulkin concluded.
By JUDY SIEGEL-ITZKOVICH 29/04/2010 Jeruslem Post


Hand-clapping songs improve motor
and cognitive skills

Hand-clapping songs improve motor and
cognitive skills

Washington, DC: Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) researcher conducted the first study of hand-clapping songs, revealing a direct link between those activities and the development of important skills in children and young adults, including university students.
http://www.dnaindia.com/scitech/report_hand-clapping-songs-improve-motor-and-cognitive-skills_1377037
"We found that children in the first, second and third grades who sing these songs demonstrate skills absent in children who don't take part in similar activities," explains Dr Idit Sulkin a member of BGU's Music Science Lab in the Department of the Arts. "We also found that children who spontaneously perform hand-clapping songs in the yard during recess have neater handwriting, write better and make fewer spelling errors."
Dr Warren Brodsky, the music psychologist who supervised her doctoral dissertation, said Sulkin's findings lead to the presumption that "children who don't participate in such games may be more at risk for developmental learning problems like dyslexia and dyscalculia. There's no doubt such activities train the brain and influence development in other areas. The children's teachers also believe that social integration is better for these children than those who don't take part in these songs."
As part of the study, Sulkin went to several elementary school classrooms and engaged the children in either a board of education sanctioned music appreciation program or hand-clapping songs training - each lasting a period of 10 weeks.
"Within a very short period of time, the children who until then hadn't taken part in such activities caught up in their cognitive abilities to those who did," she said. But this finding only surfaced for the group of children undergoing hand-clapping songs training. The result led Sulkin to conclude that hand-clapping songs should be made an integral part of education for children aged six to 10, for the purpose of motor and cognitive training.
During the study, "Impact of Hand-clapping Songs on Cognitive and Motor Tasks," Dr Sulkin interviewed school and kindergarten teachers, visited their classrooms and joined the children in singing. Her original goal, as part of her thesis, was to figure out why children are fascinated by singing and clapping up until the end of third grade, when these pastimes are abruptly abandoned and replaced with sports.
"This fact explains a developmental process the children are going through," Dr Sulkin observes. "The hand-clapping songs appear naturally in children's lives around the age of seven, and disappear around the age of 10. In this narrow window, these activities serve as a developmental platform to enhance children's needs -- emotional, sociological, physiological and cognitive. It's a transition stage that leads them to the next phases of growing up."

Brodsky, W., and Sulkin, I. Handclapping songs:
a spontaneous platform for cognitive development among children 5-10 years old. hand clapping songs demo.wmv

American Associates, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (2010, April 28). Hand-clapping songs improve motor and cognitive skills, research shows. ScienceDaily. Retrieved April 29, 2010, from http://www.sciencedaily.com­ /releases/2010/04/100428090954.htm

 

Dr. Warren Brodsky
Senior Lecturer, Department of the Arts
Coordinator, Division of Arts and Music
Director, Music Science Research
Room #211, Diller Building of Humanities
Tel: 08-6461443 Fax: 08-6472822 Cel: 0544-701811
wbrodsky at bgu dot ac dot il

the music psychologist who supervised her doctoral dissertation: said Sulkin's findings lead to the presumption that "children who don't participate in such games may be more at risk for developmental learning problems like dyslexia and dyscalculia. There's no doubt such activities train the brain and influence development in other areas. The children's teachers also believe that social integration is better for these children than those who don't take part in these songs."
As part of the study, Sulkin went to several elementary school classrooms and engaged the children in either a board of education sanctioned music appreciation program or hand-clapping songs training - each lasting a period of 10 weeks.
"Within a very short period of time, the children who until then hadn't taken part in such activities caught up in their cognitive abilities to those who did," she said. But this finding only surfaced for the group of children undergoing hand-clapping songs training. The result led Sulkin to conclude that hand-clapping songs should be made an integral part of education for children aged six to 10, for the purpose of motor and cognitive training.
During the study, "Impact of Hand-clapping Songs on Cognitive and Motor Tasks," Dr. Sulkin interviewed school and kindergarten teachers, visited their classrooms and joined the children in singing. Her original goal, as part of her thesis, was to figure out why children are fascinated by singing and clapping up until the end of third grade, when these pastimes are abruptly abandoned and replaced with sports.
"This fact explains a developmental process the children are going through," Dr. Sulkin observes. "The hand-clapping songs appear naturally in children's lives around the age of seven, and disappear around the age of 10. In this narrow window, these activities serve as a developmental platform to enhance children's needs -- emotional, sociological, physiological and cognitive. It's a transition stage that leads them to the next phases of growing up."
Sulkin says that no in-depth, long-term study has been conducted on the effects that hand-clapping songs have on children's motor and cognitive skills. However, the relationship between music and intellectual development in children has been studied extensively, prompting countless parents to obtain a "Baby Mozart" CD for their children.
This study also demonstrates that listening to 10 minutes of Mozart music (.i.e., the 'Mozart Effect') does not improve spatial task performance more than 10 minutes hand clapping songs training or 10 minutes exposure to silence.
Sulkin also found that hand-clapping song activity has a positive effect on adults: University students who filled out her questionnaires reported that after taking up such games, they became more focused and less tense. "These techniques are associated with childhood, and many adults treat them as a joke," she said. "But once they start clapping, they report feeling more alert and in a better mood."
Sulkin grew up in a musical home. Her father, Dr. Adi Sulkin, is a well-known music educator who, in the 1970s and 1980s, recorded and published over 50 cassettes and videos depicting Israeli children's play-songs, street-songs, holiday and seasonal songs, and singing games targeting academic skills.
"So quite apart from the research experience, working on this was like a second childhood," she noted.

Sound Training Rewires Dyslexic Children's Brains For Reading Some children with dyslexia struggle to read because their brains aren't properly wired to process fast-changing sounds. According to the study's first author, Nadine Gaab, PhD, of the Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience at Children's Hospital Boston, the finding may someday help clinicians diagnose dyslexia even before reading begins, and suggests new ways of treating dyslexia, such as musical training. "Children with developmental dyslexia may be living in a world with in-between sounds," says Gaab. "It could be that whenever I tell a dyslexic child 'ga,' they hear a mix of 'ga,' 'ka,' 'ba,' and 'wa'."

First Example of a Heritable Abnormality Affecting Semantic Cognition Found
They had difficulty repeating longer sentences correctly and learning words in lists and pairs. Their difficulties lie in semantic cognition -- the way people construct and generate meaning from words, objects and ideas.The brains of the affected family members and found they had reduced grey matter in the posterior inferior portion of the temporal lobe, a brain area known to be involved in semantic cognition.

Dylexic Children - Reading - Auditory Processing

Children with developmental dyslexia confuse letters and syllables when they read.

People with dyslexia often struggle with the ability to accurately decode and identify what they read. Although disrupted processing of speech sounds has been implicated in the underlying pathology of dyslexia, the basis of this disruption and how it interferes with reading comprehension has not been fully explained. Now, new research published by Cell Press in the December 22 issue of the journal Neuron finds that a specific abnormality in the processing of auditory signals accounts for the main symptoms of dyslexia.
"It is widely agreed that for a majority of dyslexic children, the main cause is related to a deficit in the processing of speech sounds," explains senior study author, Dr. Anne-Lise Giraud and Franck Ramus from the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris, France. "It is also well established that there are three main symptoms of this deficit: difficulty paying attention to individual speech sounds, a limited ability to repeat a list of pseudowords or numbers, and a slow performance when asked to name a series of pictures, colors, or numbers as quickly as possible. However, the underlying basis of these symptoms has not been elucidated."
Dr. Giraud and colleagues examined whether an abnormality in the early steps of auditory processing in the brain, called "sampling," is linked with dyslexia by focusing on the idea that an anomaly in the initial processing of phonemes, the smallest units of sound that can be used to make a word, might have a direct impact on the processing of speech.
The researchers found that typical brain processing of auditory rhythms associated with phonemes was disrupted in the left auditory cortex of dyslexics and that this deficit correlated with measures of speech sound processing.
Further, dyslexics exhibited an enhanced response to high-frequency rhythms that indirectly interfered with verbal memory. It is possible that this "oversampling" might result in a distortion of the representation of speech sounds.
"Our results suggest that the left auditory cortex of dyslexic people may be less responsive to modulations at very specific frequencies that are optimal for analysis of speech sounds and overly responsive to higher frequencies, which is potentially detrimental to their verbal short-term memory abilities," concludes Dr. Giraud. "Taken together, our data suggest that the auditory cortex of dyslexic individuals is less fine-tuned to the specific needs of speech processing."

First Example of a Heritable Abnormality Affecting Semantic Cognition Found (June 19, 2012) — Four generations of a single family have been found to possess an abnormality within a specific brain region which appears to affect their ability to recall verbal material, a new study by researchers at the University of Bristol and University College London has found. This is the first suggestion of a heritable abnormality in otherwise healthy humans, and has important implications for our understanding of the genetic basis of cognition. Dr Josie Briscoe of Bristol's School of Experimental Psychology and colleagues at the Institute of Child Health in London studied eight members of a single family aged from eight to 72. Despite all having high levels of intelligence since childhood, they experience profound difficulties in recalling sentences and prose, and language difficulties in listening comprehension and naming less common objects.
While their conversation is articulate and engaging, they can experience the inability to 'find' a particular word or topic -- a phenomenon similar to the 'tip-of-the-tongue' problem experienced by many people. They also report associated problems such as struggling to follow a narrative thread while reading or watching television drama. Dr Briscoe said: "With their consent, we conducted a number of standard memory and language tests on the affected members of the family. These showed they had difficulty repeating longer sentences correctly and learning words in lists and pairs. This suggests their difficulties lie in semantic cognition -- the way people construct and generate meaning from words, objects and ideas. "Given the very wide variation in age, the coherence of their difficulties in semantic cognition was remarkable."
The researchers also used Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) to study the brains of the affected family members and found they had reduced grey matter in the posterior inferior portion of the temporal lobe, a brain area known to be involved in semantic cognition.

Dr Briscoe said: "These brain abnormalities were surprising to find in healthy people, particularly in the same family, although similar brain regions have been implicated in research with older adults with neurological problems that are linked to semantic cognition.

"Our findings have uncovered a potential causal link between anomalous neuroanatomy and semantic cognition in a single family. Importantly, the pattern of inheritance appears as a potentially dominant trait. This may well prove to be the first example of a heritable, highly specific abnormality affecting semantic cognition in humans."


Babies Can Learn Words as
Early as 10 Months

KATHY HIRSH-PASEK
A two-year-old can quickly link an object--whether a flashy rattle or a boring latch--to a word. Even a one-year-old can follow a parent's gaze to an object and match it with a word being spoken. But although anecdotal evidence seems to show that babies younger than one year can learn words, it remains unclear whether they are in fact mastering language.
Now a new study reveals that 10-month-old infants can link words and objects, but only if the object is already interesting to them
.

Psychologist Kathy Hirsh-Pasek of Temple University and her colleagues tested 44 infants for the ability to learn words. The infants averaged an understanding of nearly 14 words already, according to their mothers. But the researchers paired four novel objects--a blue sparkle wand and a white cabinet latch, a pink party clacker and a beige bottle opener--with four nonsensical words--modi, glorp, dawnoo and blicket--to test their ability to associate new words with new objects.
Sitting on their mothers' laps, the infants were exposed to the objects. First, they were allowed to play with an interesting and boring object pair followed by seeing the two objects placed on a rotating board. This was done to assess which object was more interesting to the babies and, as expected, they preferred the brightly-colored, noisy ones.
Then the researchers placed the two objects on a table in front of the infant. If the baby was in one group, the experiment leader pointed to the interesting object and labeled it with one of the nonsense words. If the baby was a member of the other group, the researcher pointed to the boring object and labeled it with the same nonsense word. Regardless of the researchers' efforts, the infants looked at the object they found interesting.
But subsequent tests showed that the babies were also learning to associate it with the nonsense word. For example, when exposed to a new nonsense word, the babies would look away from the interesting object and search for a new one. Then the researchers returned to the original word and, surprisingly, 80 percent of the infants returned to looking at the original object.
This marks the first time such young infants have been shown experimentally to associate a word--even a made-up one--with an object, but, in contrast with their older peers, only one that they found interesting. "Ten-month-olds simply 'glue' a label onto the most interesting object they see," notes Shannon Pruden, a doctoral student and lead author of the study to appear in the journal Child Development. "Perhaps this is why children learn words faster when parents look at and name objects the infants already find interesting."
This inability to link social cues, words and objects may also explain why early word learning is so slow but accelerates rapidly around the age of 18 months. "The 18-month-old is a social sophisticate who can tap into the speaker's mind and the vast mental dictionary that the adult has to offer," adds Hirsh-Pasek. "At 10 months, they just cannot take the speaker's perspective into consideration." --David Biello

Babies exposed to sign language babble with their hands


QUOTE 2006

You no longer
hear kids say:

"I know that song"

Now all you

hear kids say is:

"I've got that song"