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Does musical training help reading skills?
Dear Reader, Finally – some sun on this little island! I am enjoying this delightful early spring day with a small decaf coffee (some of you may know I am not able to consume caffeine) and a faceful of bright sunshine. What a difference it makes. The daffodils are coming out in York! Today’s blog takes its title from a new paper by Reyna Gordon and colleagues (USA) that I am sure will be of interest to many of you. The paper in question is a meta-analysis, a powerful review of multiple studies. The aim of the paper is to assess whether musical training is associated with a measurable improvement in children’s reading skills…
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Feeling groovy – microtiming in swing and funk
Hello Dear Reader, Well, here we are in 2016! This blog enters its 6th year of existence and you and I continue to learn more and more about the wonderful world of music psychology. It makes me feel like having a little dance in celebration. And with that thought in mind, I turn to the new paper of interest for this blog. Microtiming in Swing and Funk affects the body movement behaviour of music expert listeners by Lorenz Kilchenmann and Olivier Senn, published August 2015 in the journal Frontiers in Psychology. Lorenz and Olivier are colleagues of mine from the Hochschule Luzern in Switzerland. I was living in Luzern and…
