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Music training is generally assumed to improve perceptual and cognitive abilities. Although correlational data highlight positive associations, experimental results are inconclusive, raising questions about causality. Does music training have far-transfer effects, or do preexisting factors determine who takes music lessons? All behavior reflects genetic and environmental influences, but differences in emphasis—nature versus nurture—have been a source of tension throughout the history of psychology. After reviewing the recent literature, we conclude that the evidence that music training causes nonmusical benefits is weak or nonexistent, and that researchers routinely overemphasize contributions from experience while neglecting those from nature. The literature is also largely exploratory rather than theory driven. It fails to explain mechanistically how music-training effects could occur and ignores evidence that far transfer is rare. Instead of focusing on elusive perceptual or cognitive benefits, we argue that it is more fruitful to examine the social-emotional effects of engaging with music, particularly in groups, and that music-based interventions may be effective mainly for clinical or atypical populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The urge to move to music is universal among humans. Unlike visual art, which is manifest across space, music is manifest across time. When listeners get carried away by the music, either through movement (such as dancing) or through reverie (such as trance), it is usually the temporal qualities of the music-its pulse, tempo, and rhythmic patterns-that put them in this state. In this article, we review studies addressing rhythm, meter, movement, synchronization, entrainment, the perception of groove, and other temporal factors that constitute a first step to understanding how and why music literally moves us. The experiments we review span a range of methodological techniques, including neuroimaging, psychophysics, and traditional behavioral experiments, and we also summarize the current studies of animal synchronization, engaging an evolutionary perspective on human rhythmic perception and cognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Auditory perception is our main gateway to communication with others via speech and music, and it also plays an important role in alerting and orienting us to new events. This review provides an overview of selected topics pertaining to the perception and neural coding of sound, starting with the first stage of filtering in the cochlea and its profound impact on perception. The next topic, pitch, has been debated for millennia, but recent technical and theoretical developments continue to provide us with new insights. Cochlear filtering and pitch both play key roles in our ability to parse the auditory scene, enabling us to attend to one auditory object or stream while ignoring others. An improved understanding of the basic mechanisms of auditory perception will aid us in the quest to tackle the increasingly important problem of hearing loss in our aging population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human language, a signature of our species, derives its power from its links to human cognition. For centuries, scholars have been captivated by this link between language and cognition. In this article, we shift this focus. Adopting a developmental lens, we review recent evidence that sheds light on the origin and developmental unfolding of the link between language and cognition in the first year of life. This evidence, which reveals the joint contributions of infants' innate capacities and their sensitivity to experience, highlights how a precocious link between language and cognition advances infants beyond their initial perceptual and conceptual capacities. The evidence also identifies the conceptual advantages this link brings to human infants. By tracing the emergence of a language-cognition link in infancy, this article reveals a dynamic developmental cascade in infants' first year, with each developmental advance providing a foundation for subsequent advances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Every day we communicate using complex linguistic and musical systems, yet these modern systems are the product of a much more ancient relationship with sound. When we speak, we communicate not only with the words we choose, but also with the patterns of sound we create and the movements that create them. From the natural rhythms of speech, to the precise timing characteristics of a consonant, these patterns guide our daily communication. By examining the principles of information processing that are common to speech and music, we peel back the layers to reveal the biological foundations of human communication through sound. Further, we consider how the brain's response to sound is shaped by experience, such as musical expertise, and implications for the treatment of communication disorders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A continuing debate in language acquisition research is whether there are critical periods (CPs) in development during which the system is most responsive to environmental input. Recent advances in neurobiology provide a mechanistic explanation of CPs, with the balance between excitatory and inhibitory processes establishing the onset and molecular brakes establishing the offset of windows of plasticity. In this article, we review the literature on human speech perception development within the context of this CP model, highlighting research that reveals the interplay of maturational and experiential influences at key junctures in development and presenting paradigmatic examples testing CP models in human subjects. We conclude with a discussion of how a mechanistic understanding of CP processes changes the nature of the debate: The question no longer is, 'Are there CPs?' but rather what processes open them, keep them open, close them, and allow them to be reopened. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on how the brain processes music is emerging as a rich and stimulating area of investigation of perception, memory, emotion, and performance. Results emanating from both lesion studies and neuroimaging techniques are reviewed and integrated for each of these musical functions. We focus our attention on the common core of musical abilities shared by musicians and nonmusicians alike. Hence, the effect of musical training on brain plasticity is examined in a separate section, after a review of the available data regarding music playing and reading skills that are typically cultivated by musicians. Finally, we address a currently debated issue regarding the putative existence of music-specific neural networks. Unfortunately, due to scarcity of research on the macrostructure of music organization and on cultural differences, the musical material under focus is at the level of the musical phrase, as typically used in Western popular music. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Describes the process involved in speech perception and language acquisition in infants. Presence of inborn perceptual sensitivities among infants allowing them to detect basic properties common to languages; Modification of such sensitivities in the first year of life; Illustration of an integrated transactional framework to account for the broad-based initial sensitivities.

Reviews on how psychology in Canada evolved over half a century to become the most popular discipline in universities and a respected health-care and helping profession. Description of organization, journals and funding of the scientific discipline; Importance of DO Hebb's research as the stimulus and foundation for discipline growth; Multicultural mosaic of Canadian society; Clinical research in Canada.