| Nowadays,many parents are paying more attention to the role of music in family.They either apply it to prenatal education,cultivate their taste or hope their kids can make some achievements in music in the future.In fact,music also plays a very important role in developing infants’ social skills as well as their character and personality.This research explored the effect of music on infants’ social skills through two experiments combing physiological experiment and practical application from both theoretical and empirical perspectives.It demonstrated its hypothesis by conducting a scientific experiment and a survey & measurement respectively.The first experiment was done in collaboration with Genetic Research Laboratory,Brown University.Physiologically,the right side of the brain is mainly responsible for image and emotion.So the experiment mainly studied the physiological subconscious functions of the left side and right side of the infants’ brain—the handedness of the infants in the context of music and language.The result shows that infants in music context are more likely to use their right hands than left hands,which physiologically confirms that music has significant influence on the right side of the infants’ brain in the critical period of brain development.The survey and measurement was based on the first experiment and focused on the infants’ psychology.The author of the study surveyed the ways local infants learn music,observed and compared the responses of the experimental group who received music education with those of the control group.To further validity of the survey data and measurements,the author also interviewed the parents and surveyed the teachers from the early education center.Based on the authoritative scale widely used in infants behavioristics,psychology and sociology,the author designed a scale that is applicable to the present study.Finally,with multiple-factor analysis,the author calculated and compared the effect of music education on the social skills of both groups.The two experiments are complementary to each other.The results show that music can be a good intervention in the development of the right side of the infants’ brain at the critical period of brain development.This is supported by the fact that most infants would touch the objects with their left hands in the music context.After the survey and measurement,with more visual methods and data,the author revealed that the scores of the experimental group are apparently higher than those of the control group in terms of social skills after the music group received music courses.All this can better prove that music may have influence on infants’ social skills.As far as the literature is concerned,not many researches are devoted to the study of infants’ social skills.Among the rare researches,most approached it either from pathological,psychological or social behavior perspective.Few have studied the effect of music on infants’ social skills.Though infants’ social skills belong to general social behavior study,its universality and popularity determines that we should adopt more visual scientific methods and language to inform people so that they can truly understand the effect of music on the development of infants’ social skills.It is hoped that this study can remind parents of a fact that music not only can cultivate infants’ taste but also shape their character and improve their social skills.In addition,it can enhance parents’ awareness of music education and update their idea of music education so as to create a good family environment for infants to develop their social skills.Moreover,according to the observations of the two groups of infants taking early education courses,the current early music education has some problems.As to the problems,the author suggested that teachers should consciously carry out interaction in class so as to better infants’ social skills.All in all,music influences not only prenatal education but also infants’ social skills which deserves moreattention. |
PDF Full Text Request