Hi everyone, this week I’m going to share the results of a super interesting study from some researchers in Germany and Australia (Rodin, Zepf, Kreutz, Grube, & Bongard, 2016). The researchers paired up with six primary schools around Germany that offered both instrumental music programs and natural science programs. Fourteen students from the music lessons consented to participate and twenty consented from the science classes. In order to ensure that accurate baseline differences were accounted for, the researchers confirmed that each group was balanced in terms of which extra-curricular activities the students took part in outside of school. Gender, age, class, school assessments on behaviour, migration history, parents’ level of education, household income, as well as cultural practices were also taken into account.
The study took place over 18 months during which time each group received one weekly lesson in either music or natural science. At two different points during these 18 months, the researchers came to the schools to measure each of the students’ stress responses. They did so by having the students play a ‘Stimulated Aggression by Virtual Opponent’ (SAVO) computer game designed to incite a reactionary response from players. The game was based on a ‘Point Subtraction Aggression Game’ (PSAG) which was adapted to be appropriate for play by minors. During the game, the children were told that they were playing against an online opponent of the same age and gender. The objective of the game was to press a button as soon as they saw the image of a soccer ball appear on a screen made to look like a soccer field. If the student reacted faster than their opponent, they won 50 points and could choose to decrease their opponent’s score anywhere from 0-100 points. When the student was slower than their opponent, points were removed from their score. In reality, their opponent was the computer program and the winner and loser of each round was predetermined. The researchers were able to measure how aggressive the students responded by how many points they removed from their opponent during the game and whether or not this was affected by how many points were removed from their own scores. In order to obtain quantitative data on the students’ physiological responses to the provocations, their heartrate, systolic blood pressure (SBP), diastolic blood pressure (DBP), heart rate (HR), and saliva cortisol concentrations were measured before, during, and after playing the game.
After analyzing their data, the researchers found that, although both the natural science students and music students showed an increase in blood pressure and salivary cortisol concentrations, only the natural science students’ aggressive behaviour increased. Furthermore, the musically trained group demonstrated a decrease in their aggressive reactions as the experiment progressed. According to the authors, this suggests that music training could help to strengthen students’ coping strategies when faced with provocations (Rodin, Zepf, Kreutz, Grube, & Bongard, 2016). As a preservice teacher who still has much to learn about navigating and resolving classroom conflicts, this is great news! Moreover, it provides yet another argument in support of music education for ALL schools. #musicforeveryone!
Until next time music and language lovers!
Sources:
Roden, I., Zepf, F., Kreutz, G., Grube, D., Bongard, S. (2016). Effects of music and natural science training on aggressive behaviour. Learning and Instruction 45, 85-92. doi: 10.1016/j.learninstruc.2016.07.002