Welcome to my blog. Throughout this semester you're going to get to learn more about my journey of writing a senior thesis that meshes the fields of music and psychology. Doesn't that sound like fun?
In one of my research methods classes I began searching for previous research that had been done in this area and found a little bit of interest. I found a paper that described the effects of an experiment done to determine the use of music to help with children learning math. Other research I found had to do with music in therapy for adults suffering from such things as post traumatic stress disorder and didn't seem quite relevant to the topic I wish to pursue.
I know that the effects of music on child development is much too broad of a subject for a senior thesis, but I'm still unsure as to how to narrow it down enough. One area I have considered is in comparing test scores in basic subjects such as math and English with children's participation and performance in music classes. I would also be interested in seeing if there is a link between social problems and music classes. These still may be too broad, and I think I may need to be more specific still.
Even if these subjects are specific enough, I think I will need to do a search for previous studies and articles in this area to get a better base for what kind of information has been collected and studied already. What I would really like to do would involve testing and research that may be beyond my capacity for two semesters' time to work. I would like to study previous papers as well as talk to elementary school teachers about children's behavior and performance in their regular classes and music classes. I would also like to interview some of the children themselves to get a view of how they view music in their lives. However, I'm not sure how plausible this would be because of strict IRB regulations, especially where children are involved. As I said, I will need to do some more research on what has already been studied first.
