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在线翻译:
szdaily -> Speak Shenzhen -> 
Music lessons have an amazing benefit
    2018-07-02  08:53    Shenzhen Daily

学乐器提升语言能力

While numerous studies have shown that learning an instrument can impact things like language ability, it wasn’t understood if this was a side effect of a general boost to cognitive skills, or something that directly affected language processing.

Now, we are getting closer to an answer, thanks to a study of 74 Chinese kindergarten children, led by neuroscientist Robert Desimone from MIT.

For the study, Desimone’s team — including MIT scientists and researchers from Beijing Normal University — recruited children from the Chinese education system with the support of education officials who wanted to see how music learning might boost their academic results.

The 4- to 5-year-old Mandarin-speaking children in the study were randomly divided into three groups. One group received a 45-minute piano lesson three times a week, while another received extra reading instruction classes. The third group acted as controls, taking no extra lessons beyond their usual routine.

The classes lasted for six months, after which the children were tested on their ability to discriminate words based on differences in tone, consonants or vowels.

The test results showed that the children who had taken piano lessons performed significantly better at discriminating between words that differ by a single consonant, when compared with the children who took extra reading lessons.

Compared to the control group, both the music learners and the extra reading group did better in terms of discriminating words based on vowel differences.

To get a sense of why these differences might be occurring, the researchers measured the children’s brain activity via electroencephalography (EEG) and found the piano group exhibited greater sensitivity to tonal changes when tones were played to them at different pitches.

The thinking goes, the exposure to music lessons helped develop this tonal sensitivity, which in part explains their better verbal word discrimination.

“That’s a big thing for kids in learning language: being able to hear the differences between words,” Desimone says. “They really did benefit from that.”

Words to Learn

相关词汇

【对照组】duìzhào zǔ

control a person, thing or group used as a standard of comparison for checking the results of a scientific experiment

【区分】qūfēn

discriminate make a clear distinction, distinguish

尽管已有许多研究显示,学习乐器能影响语言能力,但科学家不清楚语言能力的提高是认知能力普遍提高的附带效果,还是说学乐器能直接影响语言处理能力。

如今,得益于麻省理工学院的神经系统科学家罗伯特•德西蒙的一项调查研究,我们离答案又近了一步。 该研究涵盖了中国幼儿园的74名儿童。

德西蒙的团队包括来自麻省理工学院的科学家和来自北京师范大学的研究人员。为了开展这项研究,该团队在中国教育部门官员的支持下,从中国教育系统中招募了一些儿童作为研究对象。这些官员想知道学音乐是如何能提高学业成绩的。

在这项研究中,母语为汉语的4到5岁的幼童被随机分为三组。一组孩子每周上三次钢琴课,每次45分钟,另一组孩子上额外的阅读课。第三组是对照组,在日常课程外不再上其他课。

上了六个月的课以后,研究人员就辨别字的声调、声母和韵母的能力对幼童进行了测试。

测试结果显示,上过钢琴课的孩子在辨别声母不同的汉字上明显优于上过阅读课的孩子。

与此同时,学音乐的孩子和上额外阅读课的孩子在辨别韵母不同的汉字上都优于对照组的孩子。

为了弄清这些差异产生的原因,研究人员通过脑电图观测了孩子的脑活动,发现在收听抑扬顿挫的朗读时,钢琴组的孩子对声调变化更敏感。

研究人员认为,这说明上音乐课有助于培养对声调的敏感性,这也是音乐组孩子辨别字音的能力更强的部分原因。

德西蒙说:“辨别字音 —— 能够听出字与字之间的差别 —— 对于孩子学语言很重要。更强的辨音能力确实能让孩子受益。”

(Chinadaily.com.cn)

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