DAWN TO DUSK NEWS: physics

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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">Some schools are pumping music, noises and
fragrances into the classroom to see if it improves exam results – could it
work? </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">What did your
school smell like? Was it noisy or peaceful?</span><br />

<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">It might not
seem important, but a growing body of research suggests that smells and sounds
can have an impact on learning, performance and creativity. Indeed, some head
teachers have recently taken to broadcasting noises and pumping whiffs into
their schools to see whether it can boost grades. Is there anything in it? And
if so, what are the implications for the way we all work and study?</span><br />

<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">There is
certainly some well-established research to suggest that some noises can have a
detrimental effect on learning. Numerous studies over the past 15 years have
found that children attending schools under the flight paths of large airports lag
behind in their exam results.</span><br />

<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">But general
noise seems to have an effect too. Bridget Shield, a professor of acoustics at
London South Bank University, and Julie Dockrell, now at the Institute of
Education, have been conducting studies and advising politicians on the effects
of all sorts of noises, such as traffic and sirens, as well as noise generated
by the children themselves. When they recreated those particular sounds in an
experimental setting whilst children completed various cognitive tasks, they
found a significant negative effect on exam scores. “Everything points to a
detrimental impact of the noise on children’s performance, in numeracy, in
literacy, and in spelling,” says Shield. The noise seemed to have an especially
detrimental effect on children with special needs. `</span><br />

<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">Shield says the
sound of “babble” – the chatter of other children, is particularly distracting
in the classroom. Architects that fashion open-plan classrooms in schools would
do well to take this on board. “People are very distracted by speech –
particularly if it’s understandable, but you’re not involved in it.” This
phenomenon is also known as the irrelevant speech effect, she says, adding that
“it’s a very common finding in open-plan offices as well.”</span><br />

<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">Whether
background sounds are beneficial or not seems to depend on what kind of noise
it is – and the volume. In a series of studies published last year, Ravi Mehta
from the College of Business at Illinois and colleagues tested people’s
creativity while exposed to a soundtrack made up of background noises – such as
coffee-shop chatter and construction-site drilling – at different volumes. They
found that people were more creative when the background noises were played at
a medium level than when volume was low. Loud background noise, however,
damaged their creativity.</span><br />

<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">This makes sense
for a couple of reasons, says psychologist Dr Nick Perham, at Cardiff
Metropolitan University in the UK, who studies the effect of sounds on learning
but was not involved in the study.  Firstly, he says, sounds that are most
distracting tend to be very variable.  A general hum in the background
suggests a steady-state sound with not much acoustical variation. “So there’s
not much there to capture your attention – nothing distracting the subjects,”
he says. At the same time, the background noise might cause the subjects to be
in a slightly heightened state of arousal, says Perham. You don’t want too much
or too little arousal. “Medium arousal is best for good performance. So it
might be that a general hum in the background gives an optimum level of arousal.”
With that in mind, Perham suggests there may be some benefit to playing music
or other sounds in an art class or other situations where creativity is key.</span><br />

<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">Many teachers
all over the world already play music to students in class. Many are inspired
by the belief that hearing music can boost IQ in subsequent tasks, the
so-called Mozart effect. While the evidence actually suggests it’s a
stretch to say classical music boosts brainpower, researchers do think pleasant
sounds before a task can sometimes lift your mood and help you perform well,
says Perham, who has done his own studies on the phenomenon. The key appears to
be that you enjoy what you’re hearing. “If you like the music or you like the
sound – even listening to a Stephen King novel – then you did better. It didn’t
matter about the music,” he says.</span><br />

<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">However, it’s
worth considering that music is not always helpful while you’re trying to work.
Trying to perform a task which involves serial recall – for instance, doing
mental arithmetic – will be impaired by sounds with acoustic variation, which
includes most types of music, says Perham. (Except a few, like extreme death
metal.) Songs with lyrics, on the other hand, are more likely to interfere with
tasks that involve semantics – such as reading comprehension. “The task and the
sound are important, when you have both of them using the same process then you
get problems,” he says.</span><br />

<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">So, it seems
that schools that choose to screen out disturbing noises and create positive
soundscapes could enhance the learning of their students, so long as they make
careful choices.</span><br />

<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">This isn’t the
only sense being tweaked to affect learning. Special educational needs students
at Sydenham high school in London are being encouraged to revise different
subjects in the presence of different smells – grapefruit scents for maths,
lavender for French and spearmint for history.</span><br />

<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">Less research
has gone into the idea of whether scents can help with cognitive performance,
although there have been intriguing findings. In 2003, psychologist Mark Moss,
at Northumbria University, carried out a range of cognitive tests on subjects
who were exposed either
to lavender or rosemary aromas. “Rosemary in particular caught my attention
as it is considered to be arousing and linked to memory,” he says, whereas
lavender is considered to be sedating. Moss found that those who were smelling
lavender performed significantly worse in working memory tests, and had
impaired reaction times for both memory and attention-based tasks, compared to
controls. Those in the rosemary group, on the other hand, did much better than
controls overall in the memory tasks, although their reaction times were
slower.</span><br />

<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">Why might this
be? It’s perhaps not surprising that smells affect memory, given that the
brain’s olfactory bulb is intimately linked to the hippocampus, which deals
with learning. But Moss suspected there was more to it. To explore the
pharmacological effects of rosemary on the body, he drew blood samples from
volunteers who had just undergone cognitive tests in a rosemary-infused room,
and found that they had elevated levels of a compound called 1,8-cineole in
their blood. Previous research has shown that this compound increases
communication between brain cells, which might explain how it improves brain
function.<br />
<br />
So, as you finish reading this story, take a moment to tune into your senses.
Close your eyes and take a few nice deep breaths. What can you hear and smell?
The answer, it seems, may affect how much you learnt in the past few
minutes. </span><br />

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<b><span style="color: red; font-family: "Comic Sans MS"; font-size: 18.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Posted By :: Muhammad Usman</span></b></div>
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Hacking our senses to boost learning power

Some schools are pumping music, noises and fragrances into the classroom to see if it improves exam results – could it work? ...

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Hacking our senses to boost learning power

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