Understanding the Association between Musical Sophistication and Well-Being in Music Students

Abstract

Quality of life and mental health are topics under discussion in the university environment that pose new educational challenges. Public policy in Chile establishes the need to track students who are starting university and who could find themselves at possible academic risk (Law 20. 903). These transition processes experienced by students therefore need to be guided to improve the students’ quality of life. Using a mixed design, the present study analyzes the association between musical sophistication (Ollen, 2006), students’ well-being, and the performance of first-year students training to be music teachers (n = 25). The Ollen Musical Sophistication questionnaire and the Spanish version of the PERMA-profiler, a questionnaire for assessing well-being, were applied. In order to obtain detailed information about learning processes and educational needs, seven interviews were conducted. Results indicate a negative correlation between musical sophistication on the one hand and negative emotions (anxiety and anger) and loneliness on the other. This is reflected in less consistent academic performance, difficulties in identity development, and reduced motivation to face new challenges besides musical learning. We concluded that knowledge and observation of students’ previous musical experience is crucial for understanding and supporting the educational transition process and well-being of student music teachers.

Education for Sustainable Development and Meaningfulness: Evidence from the Questionnaire of Eudaimonic Well-Being from German Students

“…In a similar approach, examining the quality of life of students that results from musical sophistication, something that is certainly in the spirit of EWB, Cara et al [ 37 ] report a positive effect on the psychological well-being (anxiety and anger) of students. Overall, there is very little literature that specifically examines theoretical and practical approaches to education in relation to the quality of life of students.…”

“…German translation of the Questionnaire of Eudaimonic Well-Being [ 37 ] used in this study. English original in parentheses.…”

An Optimal Method for Speech Recognition Based on Neural Network

“…According to the complexity of the speech signal in the existing scene, the attention model can be used to analyze and extract the effective features to achieve the best emphasis effect. For example, reference [30] used a combination of CNN and an attention mechanism to emphasize emotional content in music. Reference [31] connected the local attention mechanism to the RNN and achieved automatic identification of the speaker's mood by centrally extracting short-term frame-level acoustic information associated to emotion.…”