Research

[PsychToday] Punk Music Isn’t “Bad”

July 30, 2015
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Early in my professional career as a music therapist, a colleague asked me what I thought about her teenage son’s music choices. He had started listening loud, punk-type music and my colleague was wondering whether or not she should be worried. I assured her that, although this was not a particular area of expertise for […]

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5 Difficult Concepts Made Easier by Disney’s “Inside Out”

June 26, 2015
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Disclaimer: This post gives away some plot lines from the Disney movie Inside Out. Read at your own risk. The other day, the family and I did something that millions of other families do on a typically Sunday afternoon. We went to the movies. The movie of choice? Disney’s recently released cartoon movie Inside Out. […]

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[PsychToday] How to Enhance Your Music Listening Experience

February 18, 2015
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Have you ever listened to the lyrics of a favorite song? I mean, reeeeeeally listened? Better yet, have you ever read the lyrics of a familiar song while it has played? If so, what was that like for you? In my experience, most people don’t pay much attention to lyrics. They may know the lyrics […]

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[PsychToday] Music and the Shopper

December 3, 2014
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It seems like a tradition, now, one that begins slightly before Halloween. I read it in Facebook status updates, hear it from my friends, even catch myself thinking it. “It” is the annual I-can’t-believe-I’m-hearing-Christmas-music-in-the-stores-already complaint that begins right around mid-October and continues through Thanksgiving…Read more (Image courtesy of photostock at FreeDigitalPhotos.net)

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How My Elementary School Teacher Helped Me Explain Data Collection Development

October 9, 2014
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Data collection seems to be a pervasive challenge for the music therapy student, intern, and even clinician. Whether it’s for a music therapy assessment, a regular music therapy session, or a periodic evaluation process, it can be difficult to collect client information in a meaningful and functional way that allows for accuracy, some level of […]

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Which Came First, the Music or the Musical? A Visual History of MT Language

July 31, 2014
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This morning, my husband—an avid reader of the New York Times—shared with me a tool on the NYT site that got the nerd in me really excited. This tool, called Chronicle, allows you to visually track language usage in the NYT since its launch in 1860. You insert keywords and/or phrases and the program graphs […]

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[PsychToday] Can Moving Together Rhythmically Combat Toddler Selfishness?

July 2, 2014
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Take a moment and think of all the ways we interact rhythmically with children. We rock. We bounce. We dance. We walk. It seems the developmental benefits of this intuitive, simple play may extend farther then we thought. New Research: Motor Synchrony and Prosocial Development Researchers at McMaster University conducted a series of studies to […]

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Musings on Music and Science

April 16, 2014
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I love quick-and-dirty resources that provide valuable information in an accessible format. In that spirit, I want to share this great resource recently published by the music therapy team at Neurorhythm Music Therapy. Their interactive map of the brain provides brief overviews of music’s effect on different parts of the brain with a click of […]

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Musings on the State of Music Therapy Research: Strengths, Challenges, and Future Directions

March 18, 2014
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Earlier this month I invited Dr. Michael Anestis, a clinical psychologist and researcher, to share his perspectives on music therapy research. By his own admission, his area of focus is mental health research—which omits the medical, rehabilitation, developmental, wellness, and preventive areas of focus in music therapy research—but I felt he had fair and valid […]

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