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Tuesday February 23, 2010 |
| SAN DIEGO (UPI) -- Cash-strapped school districts are making a mistake when they cut music from the kindergarten to 12 curriculum, a U.S. researcher said.
Nina Kraus of the Northwestern University said that music training has profound effects that shape the sensory system and should be a mainstay of K-12 education.
"Playing an instrument may help youngsters better process speech in noisy classrooms and more accurately interpret the nuances of language that are conveyed by subtle changes in the human voice," Kraus said in a statement.
"We've found that years of music training may also improve how sounds are processed for language and emotion."
Music training helps typically developing children as well as children with developmental dyslexia or autism more accurately encode speech.
Studies in Kraus's laboratory indicate music -- a high-order cognitive process -- affects automatic processing that occurs early in the processing stream.
"The brainstem, an evolutionarily ancient part of the brain, is modified by our experience with sound," Kraus said. "Now we know that music can fundamentally shape our subcortical sensory circuitry in ways that may enhance everyday tasks, including reading and listening in noise."
Kraus presented her findings at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in San Diego.
Copyright 2010 by United Press International
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| BOSTON (UPI) -- Chronic conditions -- asthma, diabetes or attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder -- in children may not require long-term treatment, U.S. researchers said.
Researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital for Children in Boston found the likelihood of reporting a chronic condition in children rose from 30 percent in 1986-92 to 50 percent in 2000-06.
However, the researchers also found the conditions often improve or resolve with 40 percent persisting to the end of each six-year study period.
"Although about half of all children will be obese or have another chronic health condition at some point during their childhood, less than half of them will have the same conditions six years later," lead author Dr. Jeanne Van Cleave said in a statement. "It looks like these chronic conditions may not be so permanent as we once thought."
Van Cleave and colleagues used U.S. Bureau of Labor survey information and conducted in-home interviews every two years for 2,337 children ages 2-8 in 1988, for 1,759 children ages 2-8 in 1994 and 905 2-8 years old in 2000.
The study is published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Copyright 2010 by United Press International
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