Top 10 tips for taking exams

You can work so hard to study large quantities of information for an exam, but if you don’t prepare yourself mentally and physically before that exam, all that hard work can sadly go to waste.

When it comes time to take your major exams, you really have to relate to yourself as a top class athlete. You need to eat the right foods, have the right mental attitude and let your body rest when it needs to leading up to your exams. These simple things can make all the difference to your mental clarity and performance.

You may be thinking ‘this is common sense!’ but common sense isn’t so common. I see it all the time, university students drinking energy drinks like water, getting very little sleep and eating fatty convenience foods whilst cramming for their final exams. I have to admit, I’ve also done this and I don’t recommend it. It’s a recipe for disaster or at best, mediocre grades and a stressful, miserable time.

Here are my top 10 tips for taking exams:

1. Get a good nights sleep

Studies have found that if you stay awake for 21 hours straight, you have the mental capacity of someone who is legally drunk (in terms of your ability to concentrate, memorise and recall information, etc).

You can’t afford to stay awake all night studying for an exam because you just won’t be effective on the day of the exam. Make sure you get on average 8 hours of sleep a night.

2. Exercise for at least 30 minutes a day, everyday

I make myself to go to the gym for 1 hour each day during my exam period, but 30 minutes of walking, jogging, swimming, dancing, etc will be enough.

Often students stop exercising when it comes exam time because they begin to think that they don’t have enough time (“I must spend every moment studying!”). Big mistake.

Exercise helps us study more effectively for various reasons. Firstly, it’s a great way to relieve stress and anxiety. Secondly, it gets blood flowing to your brain (supplying oxygen, antioxidant and glucose) which can help you to think more clearly.

Think of daily exercise as being an investment in your final marks.

3. Drink plenty of water

Often when we can’t think clearly and have a foggy memory, it’s because our brains need to be hydrated. While studying and taking your exams, make sure you take regular sips of water.

4. Remember, your teachers want you to do well

Years ago, I started thinking that my teachers and lecturers were out to get me and would mark me down wherever they got the chance. As a result of this thinking, I became too scared to write anything in one of my first tests for law! After receiving my terrible mark, my brother said to me “Remember bro, your teachers want you to do well. They will try to give you marks wherever they can. It’s in their interest to do so”

Don’t worry about writing a perfect answer. If you’re unsure, still put it down (even if it’s in dot points). They may not give you any marks for it, but they won’t take marks off. Just remember, your teachers really are on your side (despite all evidence to the contrary).

5. Focus on what you do know rather than what you don’t know

Chances are there will always be something that you could have studied more thoroughly or don’t know so well come the day of the exam. By that stage, you can’t do much about that, so is there any point worrying about it?

You are better off focusing on the fact that you now know so much more than you did before and a large number of the exam questions you’ll be able to answer.

6. Eat a low GI, nutritious breakfast

Studies have found that students who skip breakfast experience a 20-40% reduction in thinking skills (i.e. concentration, memory and alertness). You want to eat a low GI, nutritious breakfast to feel fuller for longer, stabilise your mood and give you plenty of energy for the day.

Here are some healthy breakfast ideas:

• Raw museli or porridge with nuts and chopped fruit
• Wholegrain toast with a variety of toppings (e.g. baked beans, tomatoes, avocado, etc.) and a piece of fruit
• An omelette made with added vegetables (i.e. onion, spinach, tomato, and mushrooms)
• A fruit smoothy

7. Avoid drinking caffeine (e.g. energy drinks, coke and coffee)

Caffeine is a stimulant drug. It gives you a rush and makes you feel good in the short term, but eventually it wears off and leaves you feeling cranky and wanting more.

It’s also a diuretic, so it makes you urinate, which means you lose water, become thirsty and want to drink more soft drink.

Studies have found that when we slurp on our cup of coffee or can of coke, we are actually inducing a state of stress. Caffeine drives the adrenal glands to produce stress hormones that in turn produce the “fight or flight” response.

Why not consider gradually replacing your caffeinated beverages with good old, simple water? If you must drink something sweet, try drinking low GI apple juice with no added sugar.

8. Go straight home after the exam

How many times have you stayed back after an exam to talk to your friends about what you put for each questions? How many times have you felt anxious after doing so?

Whilst it can be reassuring to know that you wrote the same answer as your friends, if you find out that you wrote something different and you have another 4 or 5 exams to take, this may throw you off your game.

The exam is over. There’s nothing much you can do about it, so move on and focus on the next one.

9. Take a few deep breaths when you get stuck

If you come across a question you’re not sure how to answer in the exam, stop for a moment and take a few deep breathes (in for the count of 3 and out for the count of 3). If you are not sure how to answer it there and then, move on to another question.

The worst thing you can do is start to panic, because as they say ‘stress makes you stupid’. You won’t be able to think clearly.

10. Dealing with writer’s cramp/elbow

I’m sure many of us are familiar with writers cramp/elbow. This can be due to holding your pen too tight. Loosen your grip or get a pen that you won’t have to press down so hard on the paper.

The reality is, even with a good pen, your elbow will start to hurt at some point if you’re taking a 3 hour exam. When it does hurt, have a rest for a few moments (yes, you have time to do this!) and stretch it out on your desk.

I hope you have found these tips helpful. If you have some techniques or strategies that work for you when preparing for exams, plea

 

Beat the exam blues

Although studying and writing exams are your learner’s responsibilities, exam stress affect the entire family to some extent.

Tthere’s a lot you can do as a mother to assist in getting him or her – and you! –ready for the task, reducing the stress levels and preventing overload or burnout in the process. The best way do so is to ensure that your child implements the following game plan, which should go a long way in setting the scene for an easier time.

• Take a deep breath, gently inhaling into your tummy for 4 seconds, hold for two, then release slowly through almost-closed lips for 8 seconds. This is a great way to calm down, relax and refocus, with immediate effect.
• Get some fresh air. It’s essential to take regular breaks every hour instead of endlessly trying to study without any downtime. According to SADAG, your brain can’t concentrate for longer than 40 minutes and suggests a ten minute break every hour. Go outside, walk around the garden and grab some rays to refresh and reboot your mind.
• Eat your way to better brain power with regular, healthy, balanced meals that include a lean protein, whole grain carbs and nutrient-dense colourful veggies, with healthy snacks in between –fresh fruit, low fat yoghurt, a few nuts with dried fruit or a cup of air-popped popcorn- to ensure that your blood glucose control remains constant which will assist in optimising concentration, says Claire Julsing Strydom, a registered dietician at Nutritional Solutions. Staying well-hydrated is essential too, but stick to plain water rather than energy drinks andcaffeine which will pick you up then drop you down just as quickly. Supplementing with Vitamin B complex will also help to counteract stress.
• Get moving –whether it’s a run or walk in the nearest park, a gym class or a bike ride, getting physical is the perfect way to reduce those stress levels and to re-energize and unwind no matter how tired or brain dead you may be. Furthermore those feel-good hormones that are released during exercise will   elevate your mood and clear that foggy mind.
• Get plenty of sleep. Sleep deprivation due to anxiety or stress can lead to moodiness and concentration problems, so schedule in 20 minute power naps each day and some extra shut-eye over the weekend. You should also chat to your pharmacist or healthcare practitioner about a non-habit forming, non sedating homeopathic medicine that can help relieve the symptoms of mild anxiety and sleeplessness caused by everyday stress, that can be safely used by every member of the family.

Remember that it’s important to watch your child carefully during these pressurised weeks and to contact a professional if you’re at all concerned. About one in ten 13 -19 year olds will experience some form of depression which is often exacerbated by exam stress, and the earlier treatment is sought, the more likely it will be able to be successfully managed.

 

Source: http://www.health24.com/Lifestyle/Teen/Your-life/Beat-exam-blues-20130210

RSA is a water-scarce country – Zuma

Johannesburg – South Africa is a water-scarce country with it being a problem in many communities, President Jacob Zuma said on Friday.

“South Africa is rapidly growing into a water-scarce country, particularly due to broader changes which are caused by climate change and global warming,” Zuma said in a speech prepared for delivery in Giyani, Limpopo.

“As a result, many countries experience varying extremes such as floods and drought.”

It was not only Limpopo that faced water problems. Other provinces also had water shortages.

“Where there is a shortage of water, sanitation is also poor and consequently health is affected,” he said.

“Water is life. Without water, life is difficult.”

Zuma, in the area as part of a presidential siyahlola monitoring visit, said water services had been established in 55 villages in the Mopani district, following complaints over a long period of time.

In other areas, the biggest problem was ageing infrastructure.

“As government, we have made various interventions to deal with this challenge in the country,” Zuma said.

“We have, for example, expanded water infrastructure, such as building dams and refurbishing and improving old infrastructure to improve water supply.”

De Hoop Dam had recently been opened in Limpopo, with new dams opened in other provinces as well.

“We are also increasing the municipal infrastructure grant to enable the municipalities to increase their scale of service delivery.

“We continue to focus on providing water throughout the country.”

In the past five months, government had attended to water and sanitation problems in places such as Bloemhof, Ngobi, and the Ngaka Modiri Molema district in North West.

Other places included the Makana district municipality in the Eastern Cape, Hobhouse in the Free State, and Umkhanyakude district municipality in KwaZulu-Natal.

“There is an acute shortage of water in the Mopani district area. The scale of dependence on boreholes illustrates the gravity of this challenge, even in the hospitals,” Zuma said.

Water shortages

“Rural areas in this part of the country are suffering, particularly when you consider that almost half of the boreholes drilled are for one or other reason not working.”

All five local municipalities in the Mopani district municipality had been experiencing serious water shortages.

“This is why we have mounted massive efforts to improve the provision of water in this area, among others through the Giyani water treatment works which are being refurbished,” Zuma said.

“The scope of the Giyani water treatment works project includes the construction of an additional 6.7 megalitres per day capacity water treatment works.”

It also included the refurbishment of the existing 30 megalitres treatment works to increase the supply to 36.7 megalitres per day.

The Giyani water treatment works was one of the 26 water treatment works which supplied the Mopani district.

Source: http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/SA-a-water-scarce-country-Zuma-20141101

Science Expo 2014

Eid Mubarak to all Muslim Scholars and their families.

Expo Projects from Muslim Scholars can be handed in any time this week. Remember though that in order to be considered for Gauteng Regional Finals, your project must be evaluated by the Wednesday 30th of July 2014. Mr Conacher will be available on Wednesday from after school till 14:00, and could go on to 15:00 (If needed).

Our grateful thanks to the University of Pretoria (with a special word of thanks to Professor and Mrs Meyer) for their assistance with the judging of the projects, their input was amazing and we really appreciate them spending their time with us.

To the scholars that presented today, thank you for all your hard work, I trust you now realise that procrastination leads to crisis, and know you learnt a lot and also enjoyed sharing your knowledge with others. Remember you will do another Science Expo in High School, and lessons learnt today should be implemented then.

Our thanks go to Dr Evangelides, Mr McLeod and Mr Botha, as well as to the teachers, students and scholars from the College and the Preparatory School for coming and sharing with us.

Further thanks go to Mr Makhubela and his team for their efficient and supportive role in assisting us in with many of the unseen activities in preparing for today.

Grateful thanks to the parents and all the staff at Crawford and other schools that taught the Grade 6’s the skills they utilised today. Further thanks to Mrs Vos, Ms Naidoo, Mrs Baird and Mrs Swanepoel for them using Science Expo in a cross subject cross curriculum manner and to Mrs Joubert and Mrs Malan for their kind, friendly and efficient supportive role.

A weary but elated Mr C salutes you all.

Improving your memory

Do you forget people’s names at the worst moments?

Are you ever asked a question, and you should know the answer, but you struggle to form an intelligent reply?

These are common instances where a good memory is important.

Memory is more than recalling information for exams or trivia games. It’s an important work skill that you can develop and improve. Whether it’s remembering key statistics during a negotiation, or quoting a precedent-setting action when making a decision, or impressing clients with your knowledge of their product lines – your ability to remember is a major advantage.

People with good memories are often seen as knowledgeable, smart, competent, and dependable. And there are many techniques you can use to develop your own ability to remember information – and then recall it when and where you need it.

Take Care of Your Health

The basis for a good memory is a healthy mind and body. You can’t expect your brain to function at its best if you don’t take care of the body that feeds it. Here are some key issues that you need to address:

• Eat well – Make sure key vitamins are in your diet, including folic acid, vitamin B12, and antioxidants. These improve the sharpness of the mind. If necessary, take vitamin supplements.
• Drink plenty of water – Most of us are dehydrated and don’t even know it. When you don’t drink enough water, your body and mind become weak and tired. Water makes red blood cells more active and gives you more energy.
• Get enough sleep – During sleep, your brain recharges itself. Studies have shown that your brain needs sleep to change new memories into long-term memories.
• Manage stress effectively – Ongoing stress has many harmful health effects. Learn to limit and control the stress in your life. Use physical relaxation techniques  , thought awareness and rational positive thinking  , andimagery   to reduce your levels of stress.
• Don’t smoke – Limit caffeine and alcohol use (excessive alcohol can seriously affect your short term memory). Get enough exercise.

These basic health tips allow you to maximize your brain’s abilities.

Use Mnemonics

Mnemonics   are simple memory-improving tools that help you connect everyday, easy-to-remember items and ideas to information you want to remember. Later, by recalling these everyday items, you can also recall what you wanted to remember.

There are many mnemonic techniques:

• The Number/Rhyme Technique   – This allows you to remember ordered lists. Start with a standard word that rhymes with the number (we recommend 1 – Bun, 2 – Shoe, 3 – Tree, 4 – Door, 5 – Hive, 6 – Bricks, 7 – Heaven, 8 – Gate, 9 – Line, 10 – Hen). Then create an image that associates each with the thing you’re trying to remember. To remember a list of South American countries using number/rhyme, you might start with:
  • One – Bun/Colombia: A BUN with the COLUMn of a Greek temple coming out of it.
  • Two – Shoe/Venezuela: VENus de Milo coming out of the sea on a SHOE.
  • Three – Tree/Guyana: Friends call GUY and ANnA sitting in a TREE.
  • Four – Door/Ecuador: A DOOR in the shape of a circle/globe with a golden EQUAtOR running around it.
• The Number/Shape System   – Here, create images that relate to the shape of each number, and connect those images to the items in your list. Let’s use the same example:
  • One – Spear/Columbia: The shaft of the SPEAR is a thin marble COLUMn.
  • Two – Swan/Venezuela: This time, VENus is standing on the back of a SWAN.
  • Three – Bifocal Glasses/Guyana: GUY has just trodden on ANnA’s bifocals. She’s quite cross!
  • Four – Sailboat/Ecuador: The boat is sailing across the golden line of the EQUAtOR on a globe.
• The Alphabet Technique   – This works well for lists of more than 9 or 10 items (beyond 10, the previous techniques can get too difficult). With this system, instead of finding a word that rhymes with the number, you associate the things you want to remember with a particular letter of the alphabet, from A to Z. This is an efficient way to remember an ordered list of up to 26 items.
• The Journey System   – In your mind, think about a familiar journey or trip: For example, you might go from your office to your home. Associate the things that you want to remember with each landmark on your journey. With a long enough, well-enough known journey, you can remember a lot of things!
• The Roman Room System   (Loci Method) – This technique uses location to stimulate your memory. Connect your list with items you see in a familiar room or location. You might find associations with things in your kitchen, in your office, or at a familiar grocery store.

Our Bite-Sized Training session Remember! will help you to review and practice some of these mnemonic techniques.

Mind Mapping

Mind maps   (also called concept maps or memory maps) are an effective way to link ideas and concepts in your brain, and then “see” the connections firsthand. Mind mapping is a note-taking technique that records information in a way that shows you how various pieces of information fit together. There’s a lot of truth in the saying “A picture speaks a thousand words”, and mind maps create an easily-remembered “picture” of the information you’re trying to remember.

This technique is very useful to summarize and combine information from a variety of sources. It also allows you to think about complex problems in an organized manner, and then present your findings in a way that shows the details as well as the big picture.

The mind map itself is a useful end product. However, the process of creating the map is just as helpful for your memory. Fitting all the pieces together, and looking for the connections, forces you to really understand what you’re studying – and it keeps you from trying to simply memorize.

Challenge Your Brain

As with other parts of your body, your mind needs exercise. You can exercise your brain by using it in different ways, on a regular basis. Try the following:

• Learn a new skill or start a hobby – Find activities that build skills you don’t normally use in your daily life. For example, if you work with numbers all day, develop your creative side with art classes or photography.
• Use visualization on a regular basis – Since much of memory involves associating and recalling images, it’s important to build this skill. Get plenty of practice with this!
• Keep active socially – When you communicate and interact with people, you have to be alert. This helps keep your brain strong and alive.
• Focus on the important things – You can’t possibly remember everything, so make sure you give your brain important things to do – and don’t overload it with “waste.” The “garbage in, garbage out” philosophy works well here.

  Tip:

  While it’s important to develop a good memory, remembering unnecessary things (such as tasks you need to do, or things you need to buy) is hard work. What’s more, because these consume short-term memory, they can diminish your ability to concentrate on other things. They can also leave you stressed, as you struggle to remember all of the things you have to do.

  Write these things down on your to-do list  ! This way, you don’t have to remember everything. And if your memory fails, you know where to look for the information you need.

• Keep your brain active with memory games   and puzzles – Try Sudoku, chess, Scrabble, and Word Twist as well as trivia games, pair matching, and puzzles. These are popular ways to practice memorization while having fun. And explore brain-training sites like Lumosity as a way of pepping up your mind.

Key Points

Your memory is a valuable asset that you should protect and develop. Even if you no longer have to memorize information for exams, the ability to remember quickly and accurately is always important.

Whether it’s remembering the name of someone you met at a conference last month, or recalling the sales figure from last quarter, you must rely on your memory. Learn and practice the above techniques to keep your mind healthy.

You have only one brain – so treat it well, give it lots of exercise, and don’t take it for granted. You never know when you’ll need its skills to be at their best!

Source: http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newISS_95.htm

Memory Techniques

Introduction to Memory Techniques

Use your whole mind to remember.

© iStockphoto/Yakobchuk

The tools in this section help you to improve your memory. They help you both to remember facts accurately and to remember the structure of information.

The tools are split into two sections. Firstly you’ll learn the memory techniques themselves. Secondly we’ll look at how you can use them in practice to remember peoples names, languages, exam information, and so on.

As with other mind tools, the more practice you give yourself with these techniques, the more effectively you will use them. This section contains many of the memory techniques used by stage memory performers. With enough practice and effort, you may be able to have a memory as good. Even if you do not have the time needed to develop this quality of memory, many of the techniques here are useful in everyday life.

Mnemonics

‘Mnemonic’ is another word for memory tool. Mnemonics are techniques for remembering information that is otherwise quite difficult to recall: A very simple example is the ’30 days hath September’ rhyme for remembering the number of days in each calendar month.

The idea behind using mnemonics is to encode difficult-to-remember information in a way that is much easier to remember.

Our brains evolved to code and interpret complex stimuli such as images, colors, structures, sounds, smells, tastes, touch, positions, emotions and language. We use these to make sophisticated models of the world we live in. Our memories store all of these very effectively.

Unfortunately, a lot of the information we have to remember in modern life is presented differently – as words printed on a page. While writing is a rich and sophisticated medium for conveying complex arguments, our brains do not easily encode written information, making it difficult to remember.

This section of Mind Tools shows you how to use all the memory resources available to you to remember information in a highly efficient way.

Using Your Whole Mind to Remember

The key idea is that by coding information using vivid mental images, you can reliably code both information and the structure of information. And because the images are vivid, they are easy to recall when you need them.

The techniques explained later on in this section show you how to code information vividly, using stories, strong mental images, familiar journeys, and so on.

You can do the following things to make your mnemonics more memorable:

• Use positive, pleasant images. Your brain often blocks out unpleasant ones.
• Use vivid, colorful, sense-laden images – these are easier to remember than drab ones.
• Use all your senses to code information or dress up an image. Remember that your mnemonic can contain sounds, smells, tastes, touch, movements and feelings as well as pictures.
• Give your image three dimensions, movement and space to make it more vivid. You can use movement either to maintain the flow of association, or to help you to remember actions.
• Exaggerate the size of important parts of the image.
• Use humor! Funny or peculiar things are easier to remember than normal ones.
• Similarly, rude rhymes are very difficult to forget!
• Symbols (red traffic lights, pointing fingers, road signs, etc.) can code quite complex messages quickly and effectively.

Designing Mnemonics: Imagination, Association and Location

The three fundamental principles underlying the use of mnemonics are imagination, association and location. Working together, you can use these principles to generate powerful mnemonic systems.

Imagination: is what you use to create and strengthen the associations needed to create effective mnemonics. Your imagination is what you use to create mnemonics that are potent for you. The more strongly you imagine and visualize a situation, the more effectively it will stick in your mind for later recall. The imagery you use in your mnemonics can be as violent, vivid, or sensual as you like, as long as it helps you to remember.

Association: this is the method by which you link a thing to be remembered to a way of remembering it. You can create associations by:

• Placing things on top of each other.
• Crashing things together.
• Merging images together.
• Wrapping them around each other.
• Rotating them around each other or having them dancing together.
• Linking them using the same color, smell, shape, or feeling.
• As an example, you might link the number 1 with a goldfish by visualizing a 1-shaped spear being used to spear it.

Location: gives you two things: a coherent context into which you can place information so that it hangs together, and a way of separating one mnemonic from another. By setting one mnemonic in a particular town, I can separate it from a similar mnemonic set in a city. For example, by setting one in Wimbledon and another similar mnemonic with images of Manhattan, we can separate them with no danger of confusion. You can build the flavors and atmosphere of these places into your mnemonics to strengthen the feeling of location.

Source: http://www.mindtools.com/memory.html

Sleep’s memory role discovered

The mechanism by which a good night’s sleep improves learning and memory has been discovered by scientists.

The team in China and the US used advanced microscopy to witness new connections between brain cells – synapses – forming during sleep.

Their study, published in the journal Science, showed even intense training could not make up for lost sleep.

Experts said it was an elegant and significant study, which uncovered the mechanisms of memory.

It is well known that sleep plays an important role in memory and learning. But what actually happens inside the brain has been a source of considerable debate.

Researchers at New York University School of Medicine and Peking University Shenzhen Graduate School trained mice in a new skill – walking on top of a rotating rod.

They then looked inside the living brain with a microscope to see what happened when the animals were either sleeping or sleep deprived.

Their study showed that sleeping mice formed significantly more new connections between neurons – they were learning more.

A connection between two brain cells

And by disrupting specific phases of sleep, the research group showed deep or slow-wave sleep was necessary for memory formation.

During this stage, the brain was “replaying” the activity from earlier in the day.

Prof Wen-Biao Gan, from New York University, told the BBC: “Finding out sleep promotes new connections between neurons is new, nobody knew this before.

“We thought sleep helped, but it could have been other causes, and we show it really helps to make connections and that in sleep the brain is not quiet, it is replaying what happened during the day and it seems quite important for making the connections.”

Analysis

This is just the latest piece of science to highlight the importance of sleep.

A new reason for sleep was discovered last year when experiments showed the brain used sleep to wash away waste toxins built up during a hard day’s thinking.

However, there are concerns that people are not getting enough sleep.

As part of the BBC’s Day of the Body Clock, Prof Russell Foster argued that society had become “supremely arrogant” in ignoring the importance of sleep, leading to “serious health problems”.

These include:

• cancer
• heart disease
• type-2 diabetes
• infections
• obesity

The reward for more sleep, Prof Foster argues, is we would all be “better human beings.”

BBC Body Clock: What makes you tick

BBC Science: Sleep

Further tests showed how significant sleep was.

Mice doing up to an hour’s training followed by sleep were compared with mice training intensively for three hours but then sleep deprived.

The difference was still stark, with the sleepers performing better and the brain forming more new connections.

Prof Gan added: “One of the implications is for kids studying, if you want to remember something for long periods you need these connections.

“So it is probably better to study and have good sleep rather than keep studying.”

Commenting on the findings, Dr Raphaelle Winsky-Sommerer, from the University of Surrey, told the BBC: “This is very impressive, carefully crafted and using a combination of exquisite techniques to identify the underlying mechanisms of memory.

“They provide the cellular mechanism of how sleep contributes to dealing with experiences during the day.

“Basically it tells you sleep promotes new synaptic connections, so preserve your sleep.”

 

 Source: http://www.bbc.com/news/health-27695144

Does listening to Mozart really boost your brainpower?

(Copyright: Thinkstock)

It is said that classical music could make children more intelligent, but when you look at the scientific evidence, the picture is more mixed.

You have probably heard of the Mozart effect. It’s the idea that if children or even babies listen to music composed by Mozart they will become more intelligent. A quick internet search reveals plenty of products to assist you in the task. Whatever your age there are CDs and books to help you to harness the power of Mozart’s music, but when it comes to scientific evidence that it can make you more clever, the picture is more mixed.

The phrase “the Mozart effect” was coined in 1991, but it is a study described two years later in the journal Nature that sparked real media and public interest about the idea that listening to classical music somehow improves the brain. It is one of those ideas that feels plausible. Mozart was undoubtedly a genius himself, his music is complex and there is a hope that if we listen to enough of it, a little of that intelligence might rub off on us.

The idea took off, with thousands of parents playing Mozart to their children, and in 1998 Zell Miller, the Governor of the state of Georgia in the US, even asked for money to be set aside in the state budget so that every newborn baby could be sent a CD of classical music. It’s not just babies and children who were deliberately exposed to Mozart’s melodies. When Sergio Della Sala, the psychologist and author of the book Mind Myths, visited a mozzarella farm in Italy, the farmer proudly explained that the buffalos were played Mozart three times a day to help them to produce better milk.

I’ll leave the debate on the impact on milk yield to farmers, but what about the evidence that listening to Mozart makes people more intelligent? Exactly what was it was that the authors of the initial study discovered that took public imagination by storm?

When you look back at the original paper, the first surprise is that the authors from the University of California, Irvine are modest in their claims and don’t even use the “Mozart effect” phrase in the paper. The second surprise is that it wasn’t conducted on children at all: it was in fact conducted with those stalwarts of psychological studies – young adult students. Only 36 students took part. On three occasions they were given a series of mental tasks to complete, and before each task, they listened either to ten minutes of silence, ten minutes of a tape of relaxation instructions, or ten minutes of Mozart’s sonata for two pianos in D major (K448).

The students who listened to Mozart did better at tasks where they had to create shapes in their minds. For a short time the students were better at spatial tasks where they had to look at folded up pieces of paper with cuts in them and to predict how they would appear when unfolded. But unfortunately, as the authors make clear at the time, this effect lasts for about fifteen minutes. So it’s hardly going to bring you a lifetime of enhanced intelligence.

Brain arousal

Nevertheless, people began to theorise about why it was that Mozart’s music in particular could have this effect. Did the complexity of music cause patterns of cortical firing in the brain similar to those associated with solving spatial puzzles?

More research followed, and a meta-analysis of sixteen different studiesconfirmed that listening to music does lead to a temporary improvement in the ability to manipulate shapes mentally, but the benefits are short-lived and it doesn’t make us more intelligent.

Then it began to emerge that perhaps Mozart wasn’t so special after all. In 2010 a larger meta-analysis of a greater number of studies again found a positive effect, but that other kinds of music worked just as well. One study found that listening to Schubert was just as good, and so was hearing a passage read out aloud from a Stephen King novel. But only if you enjoyed it. So, perhaps enjoyment and engagement are key, rather than the exact notes you hear.

Although we tend to associate the Mozart effect with babies and small children, most of these studies were conducted on adults, whose brains are of course at a very different stage of development. But in 2006 a large study was conducted in Britain involving eight thousand children. They listened either to ten minutes of Mozart’s String Quintet in D Major, a discussion about the experiment or to a sequence of three pop songs: Blur’s “Country House,” “Return of the Mack,” by Mark Morrison and PJ and Duncan’s “Stepping Stone”. Once again music improved the ability to predict paper shapes, but this time it wasn’t a Mozart effect, but a Blur effect. The children who listened to Mozart did well, but with pop music they did even better, so prior preference could come into it.

Whatever your musical choice, it seems that all you need to do a bit better at predictive origami is some cognitive arousal. Your mind needs to get a little more active, it needs something to get it going and that’s going to be whichever kind of music appeals to you. In fact, it doesn’t have to be music. Anything that makes you more alert should work just as well – doing a few star jumps or drinking some coffee, for instance.

There is a way in which music can make a difference to your IQ, though. Unfortunately it requires a bit more effort than putting on a CD. Learning to play a musical instrument can have a beneficial effect on your brain. Jessica Grahn, a cognitive scientist at Western University in London, Ontario says that a year of piano lessons, combined with regular practice can increase IQ by as much as three points.

So listening to Mozart won’t do you or your children any harm and could be the start of a life-long love of classical music. But unless you and your family have some urgent imaginary origami to do, the chances are that sticking on a sonata is not going to make you better at anything.

Source: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20130107-can-mozart-boost-brainpower

Hacking our senses to learn faster

(Thinkstock)

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

What did your school smell like? Was it noisy or peaceful?

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?

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.

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. `

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Source: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20131022-hacking-senses-to-boost-learning

Want to learn quicker – use your body

(Science Photo Library)

Waving your arms, wriggling your fingers and striding around a room can help you learn faster, says Colin Barras. How does it work?

Ever got to grips with a problem? Picked up a new skill? Grasped a difficult concept? The language of learning is full of references to parts of the body outside the brain. Perhaps that’s because these phrases hint at something deeper. Researchers are discovering that learning is easier, quicker and more long-lasting if lessons involve the body as well as the mind – whether it’s gesturing with the arms or moving around a room. Can these insights enhance teaching and learning in the future? And should it inform the way technology is employed in the classroom?

In some ways, the idea that the body can aid learning should come as no surprise. Consider that many of us probably began to understand basic arithmetic by counting on our fingers before learning to count in our head instead.

“In the past, people have argued that as we learn we become more able to think abstractly,” says Andrew Manches, a teacher turned psychologist at the University of Edinburgh in the UK. “Young children depend on physical objects to help them, but if I’m asked in a meeting now to work out a calculation and I get out a set of blocks to help me – obviously I’m going to look silly.”

Conventional thinking might suggest that teachers should help wean children off physical objects and body gestures to prepare them for the adult world. But in truth, the physical world never really leaves our thinking. For example, when we process verbs such as lick, kick and pick, medical scanners show that the parts of our brain that control the muscles in our face, legs and hands, respectively, light up with activity. And even the most abstract of concepts may have grounding in the real world.

Body and mind

This theory is called embodied cognition, and it suggests that what goes on in our minds stems from our actions and interactions with the world around us. It means that encouraging children to think and learn in a purely abstract way might actually make lessons harder for them to understand and remember..

Science is beginning to back up the idea that actions really might speak louder than words in the classroom. Spencer Kelly, a psychologist at Colgate University in Hamilton, New York, has found that people spendthree times as much time gesturing when they think it is particularly important that they get a message across, suggesting that even if only at the subconscious level, we appreciate the communicative value of our body language. Kelly has also found evidence that people like a teacher better when that teacher uses arm and hand movements to emphasise points.

Yet body movements can do more than simply raise a teacher’s popularity. Studies show that young children learn more if their teacher uses gestures when explaining a concept. Meanwhile, Susan Wagner Cook, a psychologist at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, has found that childrenpick up new concepts more effectively if they are taught to mirror and repeat the gestures their teacher uses, and that lessons involving words and gestures live longer in a student’s memory than lessons using words alone.

Tech tricks

There’s a place for technology in all of this – particularly with the rise of gesture-recognition devices like the Nintendo Wii, Microsoft’s Kinect add-on for the Xbox and touchscreen tablet PCs. Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, turned two Wii-mote video game controllers into a device that helps children visualise equivalence ratios – for instance, understanding how if one plant grows twice as fast as another, the difference between their respective heights will become larger over time.

This can be a tricky concept for children to understand. When asked to use their hands to represent the different growth rates, some students will place one hand slightly higher than the other, but then raise both hands at the same speed. The Berkeley team’s device gives the children dedicated and instant feedback, helping them work out when their hand gestures correctly match what would happen as the two plants grow. Afterwards, even struggling students can articulate in words that they actually understand why moving their hands at different speeds is the correct response.

The Kinect sensor, meanwhile, is being used in studies to help children learn to more accurately map numbers onto physical space – a simple skill but one that is fundamental to our understanding of mathematics. Most people know, for instance, to place the number 50 exactly midway along a line marked “0” at one end and “100” at the other. Researchers at Eberhard Karls University in Tuebingen, Germany, found that seven-year-olds can place numbers along such a line more accurately if theyphysically walk the line on the floor – with their motion captured and analysed by the Kinect sensor – than if they use a mouse to interact with a computer screen representation of the line.

Manches has begun exploring whether Kinect offers a way to re-imagine traditional children’s blocks. The technology allows children to pick up and manipulate virtual blocks on the screen using the same gestures they would use to play with real blocks – but the virtual blocks can do new things like change colour as they are pulled apart into smaller units, giving children fresh ideas about the way numbers can be broken down.

Ramp up activity?

In light of all this, it’s tempting to conclude that teachers, and their students, should be jumping up and down, or waving their arms about like windmills during lessons. Manches, however, advises caution. The trouble is, science has not quite worked out exactly how the relationship between body and mind effects work. “You can’t jump into the prediction and intervention stage too early,” says Manches.

This isn’t to say there aren’t working theories for what’s going on, particularly when it comes to understanding why gesturing helps lodge information more firmly in the mind, says Cook. The lessons we learn at school usually involve declarative memory – these are the facts that we can consciously recall or ‘declare’ at a later date. But some of our memories are non-declarative – things we can remember without really being able to explain why. The classic example is how we never really forget how to ride a bike. Physical movements seem to be particularly suitable fodder for making non-declarative memories, and so by both speaking and gesturing, we may encourage our brains to make two independent memories of an event, boosting our chances of remembering the event later.

Even though researchers like Manches and Cook remain reluctant to set out prescriptive guidelines for teachers, their caution is beginning to weaken. “Five years ago I might have said there’s potential for real harm in giving teachers instructions from this research,” says Cook. Today, she is less worried of the potential to do damage – in part because none of her studies to-date has uncovered any evidence of detrimental side effects.

“In every study that we’ve tested the importance of gesturing, we’ve found it works,” she says. “Even in the experimental settings where we thought gesturing wouldn’t work.”

Source: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140321-how-to-learn-fast-use-your-body