Advocates of the arts agree that the K‐12 curriculum should include dedicated time for arts instruction. Some have argued further that knowledge and skills acquired through the arts transfer to nonarts domains. Others claim that evidence of this kind of transfer is limited and instead argue that the arts cultivate valuable dispositions that help students succeed both in and outside of school. Another potential benefit of the arts has received little attention, however. Arts integration—the use of the arts as a teaching methodology throughout the curriculum—may improve long‐term retention of content. A variety of long‐term memory effects well known in cognitive psychology are reviewed, and it is argued that arts integration naturally takes advantage of these effects while promoting student motivation. This review of findings and applications provides an example of how existing research from neuroscience and cognitive science can inform the work of practicing educators.
Previous correlational and quasi‐experimental studies of arts integration—the pedagogical practice of “teaching through the arts”—suggest its value for enhancing cognitive, academic, and social skills. This study reports the results of a small, preliminary classroom‐based experiment that tested effects of arts integration on long‐term retention of content. We designed matched arts‐integrated (AI) and conventional science units in astronomy and ecology. Four randomized groups of 5th graders in one school completed one unit in the treatment (AI) condition and the other in the control (conventional) condition. To control for teacher effects, four teachers taught the same subject to different groups in each condition. We administered curriculum‐based assessments before, immediately after, and 2 months after each unit to measure initial learning and retention. Results showed no differences in initial learning, but significantly better retention in the AI condition. Increases in retention were greatest for students at the lowest levels of reading achievement.
For many years it has been assumed that when hearing familiar sounds in unfamiliar combinations, listeners will perceive the sounds accurately. In the recent years, this assumption has been challenged [Halle et al. (1998) and Berent et al. (2006)]. The present study investigates what listeners actually hear when presented with familiar consonants in unfamiliar combinations. A group of monolingual native English speakers was asked to transcribe Russian words containing only consonants attested in English but presented in a two-, three-, and four-consonant combinations (CC, CCC, and CCCC clusters) which are not legal in English. The results indicate that the accuracy of response and the nature of errors depend on the type of cluster. CC clusters (e.g., /pn/) were most often misperceived as containing a vowel between the two consonants, and perception accuracy was well-explained by phonological principles, such as sonority. On the other hand, CCC (e.g., /vzb/) and CCCC (e.g., /fstr/) cluster transcriptions contained relatively few vowel insertions, but many deletions and substitutions and their accuracy were better explained by acoustic factors, such as voicing of the consonants. These results suggest that speech perception is influenced by both phonological and acoustic factors.
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