Helen Davis

In this paper, we investigate longitudinally the association between participation in a musical ensemble in secondary school, academic performance and academic self concept to test whether more able students are more likely to participate in musical ensembles and whether participation confers any academic advantages. Longitudinal data on extracurricular activity participation, school grades, academic self concept and general intellectual aptitude were drawn from 1257 adolescents in the Michigan Study of Adolescent Life Transitions. School results at Grade 7, 9, 10, 11 and 12 of participants in school band or orchestra in Grade 10 were compared to participants in school sports clubs and to students who took part in no extracurricular activities. Ensemble players did not differ from any of the other groups at any time point except for Grade 9, where they showed a significantly smaller decline in performance than students participating in no extracurricular activities, but no differences from participants in other activities. Ensemble players and participants in other activities did, however, self-rate their academic abilities significantly more positively in Grades 6 and 7 than non-participants, irrespective of their actual ability. Positive self concept in primary school appears to be predictive of participation in extracurricular activities in secondary school, but there was no compelling evidence of ensemble participation or extracurricular activity more generally having positive effects on academic performance or academic self concept for this age group, once gender and general ability were controlled.

This study investigates the relationship between individuals’ sensitivity to emotional cues in music, technical musical aptitude and general cognitive ability. Thirty-nine university undergraduates completed two emotional discrimination tasks (one involving live performers and the other computer-generated music), musical aptitude measures of pitch, rhythm and tune discrimination, and a test of fluid intelligence. Results indicated a high mean level of accuracy in emotion perception, but also some individual differences. Emotion perception was somewhat related to musical discrimination measures, and rhythm discrimination was related to intelligence, but emotion perception showed no association with intelligence. These findings are consistent with basic emotion perception in music being a ‘modular’ ability – one at which humans universally excel, regardless of their other strengths and weaknesses. However, the findings also suggest that high levels of refinement in emotion perception may be underpinned by ability to discriminate between musical sounds.

This study aimed to investigate the effects of playing a video game with high spatial content on children’s subsequent spatial abilities. Forty 6-year-olds were pretested on four tasks considered to require different spatial abilities. These tasks were Object Assembly and Block Design from the WISC-R, a mapping task involving 2D to 3D translation and 3D to 2D translation, and a computer-based spatial reaction time task. Twenty of the children were then given two hours of play on a Sony Playstation 3D simulation video game, Croc: The Legend of the Gobbos. The control group did not play the game until after the posttest. In the posttest, the four tasks were administered again. It was found that the Croc players improved on Object Assembly and the mapping task and this improvement was significantly greater than for the controls. On Block Design and the reaction time task, however, the two groups performed similarly at posttest. It was concluded that some spatial abilities improve in the short term as a result of playing spatial video games. These findings highlight the positive side of video game play for young children.

In the light of recent findings regarding girls’ non-partici- pation in computer game play, with possible long-term consequences for their computer skills in adult life, this study examined factors contributing to girls’ computer game performance in a developmental context. Seven- and 9-year-old girls (N = 80) took part in two computer game sessions in which they played a specially designed game, ‘Paddle Pop’, in which players hit a wall of brightly coloured tiles using a ball and a paddle. In the first session, all girls played a solo version of the game. The girls were then divided into three play conditions: solo, cooperative and competitive. All girls were then posttested on the solo version. Performance was measured in terms of hit rate, miss rate and number of tiles hit. Results indicated that, generally, girls benefited most from solo play, least from competitive play, and moderately from cooperative play. However, the most beneficial play conditions were the solo condition for the younger or less able girls, and the cooperative condition for the older, more able girls. We suggest that cooperation may be inferior to solo learning on novel tasks for young children, and that competition is clearly detrimental for girls.