Music engagement and achievement predicts higher grades in math, science, and English

Source

theconversation.com

Peter Gouzouasis

Professor, University of British Columbia

Martin Guhn

Assistant Professor, University of British Columbia

July 1, 2019

What does maturing mean after elementary school? Here’s one thing it shouldn’t mean: dropping music at school.

My colleagues and I at the University of British Columbia studied over 110,000 public school students. We learned that students involved in extended music engagement (between grades 8 – 12) do one full year better academically than non-music peers, particularly when engaged in instrumental music sustained over years of schooling. Also, music achievement predicts academic achievement in math, science and English.

Music matters for its own sake, but also because, as our study shows, music engagement sustained from childhood into adolescence – particularly instrumental music that begins in elementary school – is significantly related to better high school achievement.

Study: Rich data

Thanks to rich educational and socio-economic data capturing the full population of B.C. public school students for several cohorts, we had an unprecedented opportunity to examine how student participation in music and music achievement predicted and related to provincial examination scores in high school English, math and science subjects. We looked at scores from provincial testing from Grade 10 math, science and English as well as Grade 12 English in relationship to students’ participation in music.

In our study, we counted both the number of high school courses taken, as well as student high school involvement and grades in graduation program music courses (concert band, jazz band, orchestra, piano and choir) taken across public high school years (Grades 8-12).

Based on previous research we inferred that music involvement that continued up to Grade 12 would be associated with (and predict) higher high school grades in mathematics, science and English. We expected instrumental music would have a more pronounced positive impact than vocal music.

We found that this is true, even when we take into account the following four factors: children’s prior elementary school educational achievement in numeracy and literacy, as captured by the B.C. Foundation Skills Assessment Grade 7 examination; gender; socioeconomic background (as gauged by the student’s home neighbourhood); linguistic diversity, captured by language spoken in the home.

We used a statistical regression model and adjusted our analyses to control for those four factors. We did this to demonstrate that these factors were not key determinants in musical or academic achievement and to address the problem of what researchers call confounding — unaccounted-for factors that might lead to incorrect findings.

While we are not yet able to infer causality — that music causes students to be smarter or improve their grades — we were able to identify a predictive relationship between music achievement and academic achievement, and demonstrate that more music engagement can be better for overall learning.

Sustained engagement

A handful of experiments have found that students randomly assigned to music training outperform those assigned to non-music groups.

But music is an inherently complex phenomenon — there are many ways to make and engage with music. Many other studies have examined music participation but they didn’t take into account different types of music making such as instrumental music, vocal music, or other forms and amounts of engagement.

There are many ways to make music. (Shutterstock)

Also, several earlier studies have been based on small, unrepresentative samples or considered only brief exposure to music training — whereas a central claim substantiated by our study underscores the academic achievement benefits from sustained engagement in music training over several years.

Increased cognitive capacity

Students in the present study who were highly engaged in instrumental music were, on average, over one year ahead in their math, English and science skills, compared to those peers not engaged in school music.

We say one year ahead because the math, science and English grades that music-engaged students obtained in Grade 10 could place them a full year ahead in their curricular studies. In practical terms, the effect sizes we measured when comparing adolescents in the very highly engaged instrumental music group with the no music group (even after adjustment) were of a magnitude similar to or greater than the average annual gains in reading, science and math that are seen during the high school years in the U.S. context

We attribute these strong associations between music engagement and academic achievement to a combination of increased cognitive capacity. In the brain, instrumental music changes the structure and function of the Heschl’s gyrus (HG) and the specific area which contains it, the auditory cortex (AC).

Students learn to ‘think music’ as their musical learning deepens. (Shutterstock)

To make music in upper secondary grade levels, students need to go beyond simple button pushing and the mechanical playing of instruments. Students need to “think music” through a process known as audiation. Audiation is the ability to compare what was heard in the immediate past in music listening with the present, and to connect what was heard with our expectations of what might come next. Music audiation ability is significantly correlated to the structure and function of the Heschl’s gyrus in the auditory cortex.

We do not yet fully understand the mechanisms of how music learning transfers to other developmental areas, but our work and numerous studies suggest that extended, engagement with music learning (particularly instrumental music) enhances cognitive mechanisms.

It is also likely that prolonged and more music engagement results in higher motivation and self-efficacy, executive functions and a positive impact on emotional development and self esteem.

The patterns of our findings suggest that music participation – especially in instrumental music, and multiple years of engagement over time – confers cognitive benefits in the form of tangible differences in many aspects of academic learning.

Significant associations

When focusing solely on learners who took instrumental music, additional important and theoretically plausible findings are revealed — namely that there is a “dose-response” type relationship. This means that higher levels of engagement (more classes) in music are related to incrementally higher exam scores. We also see significant, predictive relationships between higher grades in instrumental music courses and higher exam scores.

Music may not make you smarter, but we now know that music engagement sustained from childhood into adolescence — and more of it, especially instrumental music — may lead to doing better in high school.

An emphasis on numeracy and literacy at the cost of other areas of learning, particularly music, should not be acceptable in our public schools.

Let the band play on!

Scott Emerson contributed to this study’s literature review and statistical analyses.

1984 Doublespeak: Israel and the United States Targets “the Left” as Traitorous

“A divided, poorly educated and uncritical society is particularly susceptible to a reactionary leader who can syncretize identity constructs and scapegoat others while gutting the public sphere. The use of fear to instill complacency, a sense of powerlessness and addiction to aggression at the behest of expansionism is characteristic of white supremacist, settler colonialist countries such as the US and Israel.”

Doublespeak in Israel and the United States Targets “the Left” as Traitorous

http://www.counterpunch.org

by YOAV LITVIN

June 12, 2019

Photograph Source: U.S. Embassy Tel Aviv – Public Domain

No syncretistic faith can withstand analytical criticism. The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism. In modern culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge. For Ur-Fascism, disagreement is treason.

~ Umberto Eco

In spite of a seemingly convincing victory in Israel’s recent elections, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu failed to form a right-wing coalition, which would secure him the premiership for an additional four years.

The reason: hard-right Member of Knesset (MK), former Israeli Security Minister, and leader of the Yisrael Beiteinu party Avigdor Lieberman – a settler in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, ex-nightclub bouncer and convicted child beater – refused to budge on a draft bill for ultra-orthodox Jews. In response to Lieberman’s opportunistic move, a disheveled-looking Netanyahu spoke to reporters claiming: “Lieberman is now part of the left”.

Yet Lieberman is as far from left-wing politics as can be. In fact, his signature fascistic opinions are no secret – e.g. he has openly endorsed expulsion of Palestinians from Israel and spearheaded attempts to legalize execution and even beheading of Palestinian prisoners, whom he collectively refers to as “terrorists”.

Across the pond in the United States, President Donald Trump has adopted the term “radical left” to describe his opponents in the media and the Democratic Party. With the ramping up of the 2020 election fever, Trump will likely soon drop the “radical” and simply scapegoat the “left”.

These instances of illogical characterization of critique as coming from “the left” are a form of reactionary doublespeak, well-established in Israel and the United States of America. Those who challenge members of the ruling class are stereotyped, smeared and nonsensically labeled as traitorous lefties regardless of true political orientation.

Big (white) brother

According to Collins dictionary, the term “doublespeak”, widely attributed to George Orwell’s 1984 though it was never explicitly mentioned in the book (Orwell coined the terms “newspeak” and “doubletalk”, among others), is a means of ‘… presenting things in a way that is intended to hide the truth or give people the wrong idea.’

Doublespeak is a propaganda tool which purposefully obscures, falsifies, and/or reverses the meaning of language. It is used to shift the conversation away from the content of criticism illustrating logical fallacies, uncomfortable truths, and corruptions of the ruling class, toward an illogical, emotional, and cognitively dissonant reaction to an established stereotype – a “leftist” as contemptible, disloyal, hypocritical and cowardly.

Washing one’s hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.

~ Paulo Freire

According to this narrative, the leftist seeks to weaken the “freedoms” and identity of supposed merited elements of society by promoting, at their expense, lazy freeloaders.

Thus, doublespeak serves to hardwire oppression, misogyny and the status quo of white male supremacy, protecting its accumulation and hoarding of resources at the expense of vulnerable societal groups.

Individualism versus collaboration

As a social species, humankind relies on its members for survival and progress. The modern scientific framework promotes a collaborative model in which conflict rooted in the premise of a critical interchange of ideas is encouraged as part of a need for the constant evolution of understanding and consequent ideas, ultimately leading to an equitable and sustainable existence.

In contrast, an individualistic approach animates an inherently oppressive cult of xenophobic identity and destructive conflict, discouraging collaboration and sustaining privilege through a denial of inconvenient facts and an ongoing obstruction of collectivism.

Instead of perceiving challenge, peer review and the scientific method as necessary for truth, subsequent accountability and consequent growth of humanity as a whole, it is perceived by individualists as an existential threat to their privilege. As such, reactionaries typically villainize academia and science, media and the arts and rely on celebritized pseudo-intellectuals to justify their privilege and oppression of others.

Pseudo-intellectuals and cults

Ben Shapiro, social media celebrity, pseudo-intellectual and inspiration to anti-Semites and white supremacists worldwide, recently exemplified doublespeak in an interview with BBC’s right-wing journalist Andrew Neil. When Neil challenged his opinions, Shapiro pleaded with the veteran Brit to admit he was “on the left” and abandoned the interview in protest, claiming Neil was “badly motivated”.

Pop psychologist Jordan Peterson is an additional noteworthy example of a pseudo-intellectual outside his own field who has become a cult-like thought leader amongst reactionaries. In his work, Peterson justifies inequality by claiming humans are naturally inclined to form hierarchies. He compares humans with lobsters and suggests neural systems involved in hierarchy formation in both species are controlled by the neurotransmitter molecule serotonin.

Peterson ignores and disappears studies of evolutionary biology and behavioral neuroscience which have demonstrated repeatedly the deep flaws of such a reductionist approach to the human brain and behavior. Drawing conclusions about complex social behaviors from comparisons between humans, a species with highly evolved brains with complex structures and many neurotransmitter systems, to lobsters, crustaceans with a comparatively primitive nervous system (comprised of ganglia and no brain) is blatant propagandistic pseudoscience.

This misuse of science to code cult dogma has its roots in the now highly discredited and racist theory of social Darwinism.

Trump and Netanyahu follow the fascistic playbook

Human progress – defined as sustainable, equitable and just – occurs when societies rely on historical precedents to build a framework of norms and taboos. In turn, these serve to promote progress by social enrichment on the one hand and curtailment of abuses of vulnerable and disenfranchised elements of society, on the other.

A divided, poorly educated and uncritical society is particularly susceptible to a reactionary leader who can syncretize identity constructs and scapegoat others while gutting the public sphere. The use of fear to instill complacency, a sense of powerlessness and addiction to aggression at the behest of expansionism is characteristic of white supremacist, settler colonialist countries such as the US and Israel.

Both charismatic leaders, Trump and Netanyahu skillfully use doublespeak to promote their reactionary, capitalist and white supremacist agendas. Alongside the degradation of intellectualism and collectivism, they employ trial balloons as a means of assessing public resistance before creating precedents and slogannistic memes, which serve to shatter acceptable taboos as preludes to authoritarianism.

Both Trump and Netanyahu have been able to manipulate a corrupt and often times subservient media to serve their purposes of distraction and scapegoating, which mask their ongoing looting of their country’s public domains.

The deployment of a barrage of manufactured spectacles produces an apathetic, distracted and fragmented public less likely to protest when its civil liberties are attacked and more likely to engage in infighting rather than confront the white patriarchal ruling class hegemony.

Whether it is Trump’s lies and daily tirades on Twitter or Netanyahu’s racist calls to his fanatical supporters on election night, both are adept at manipulating the public and media to serve their purposes.

With the growing tide of the global right, education of the public to the importance of reason, the scientific method and skills necessary for collaborative creation utilizing the power of conflict rooted in the premise of a critical interchange of ideas, are crucial to combat the contradictions of ruling class dogma and the complacency it manufactures.

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More articles by YOAV LITVIN

Yoav Litvin is a Doctor of Psychology/ Behavioral Neuroscience

Rhythm of Breathing Affects Memory and Fear

NEUROSCIENCE NEWS

Source

DECEMBER 7, 2016

Summary: A new study reports the rhythm of your breathing can influence neural activity that enhances memory recall and emotional judgement.

Source: Northwestern University.

Breathing is not just for oxygen; it’s now linked to brain function and behavior.

Northwestern Medicine scientists have discovered for the first time that the rhythm of breathing creates electrical activity in the human brain that enhances emotional judgments and memory recall.

These effects on behavior depend critically on whether you inhale or exhale and whether you breathe through the nose or mouth.

In the study, individuals were able to identify a fearful face more quickly if they encountered the face when breathing in compared to breathing out. Individuals also were more likely to remember an object if they encountered it on the inhaled breath than the exhaled one. The effect disappeared if breathing was through the mouth.

“One of the major findings in this study is that there is a dramatic difference in brain activity in the amygdala and hippocampus during inhalation compared with exhalation,” said lead author Christina Zelano, assistant professor of neurology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. “When you breathe in, we discovered you are stimulating neurons in the olfactory cortex, amygdala and hippocampus, all across the limbic system.”

The study was published Dec. 6 in the Journal of Neuroscience.

The senior author is Jay Gottfried, professor of neurology at Feinberg.

Northwestern scientists first discovered these differences in brain activity while studying seven patients with epilepsy who were scheduled for brain surgery. A week prior to surgery, a surgeon implanted electrodes into the patients’ brains in order to identify the origin of their seizures. This allowed scientists to acquire electro-physiological data directly from their brains. The recorded electrical signals showed brain activity fluctuated with breathing. The activity occurs in brain areas where emotions, memory and smells are processed.

This discovery led scientists to ask whether cognitive functions typically associated with these brain areas — in particular fear processing and memory — could also be affected by breathing.

The amygdala is strongly linked to emotional processing, in particular fear-related emotions. So scientists asked about 60 subjects to make rapid decisions on emotional expressions in the lab environment while recording their breathing. Presented with pictures of faces showing expressions of either fear or surprise, the subjects had to indicate, as quickly as they could, which emotion each face was expressing. NeuroscienceNews.com image is for illustrative purposes only.

The amygdala is strongly linked to emotional processing, in particular, fear-related emotions. So scientists asked about 60 subjects to make rapid decisions on emotional expressions in the lab environment while recording their breathing. Presented with pictures of faces showing expressions of either fear or surprise, the subjects had to indicate, as quickly as they could, which emotion each face was expressing.

When faces were encountered during inhalation, subjects recognized them as fearful more quickly than when faces were encountered during exhalation. This was not true for faces expressing surprise. These effects diminished when subjects performed the same task while breathing through their mouths. Thus the effect was specific to fearful stimuli during nasal breathing only.

In an experiment aimed at assessing memory function — tied to the hippocampus — the same subjects were shown pictures of objects on a computer screen and told to remember them. Later, they were asked to recall those objects. Researchers found that recall was better if the images were encountered during inhalation.

The findings imply that rapid breathing may confer an advantage when someone is in a dangerous situation, Zelano said.

“If you are in a panic state, your breathing rhythm becomes faster,” Zelano said. “As a result, you’ll spend proportionally more time inhaling than when in a calm state. Thus, our body’s innate response to fear with faster breathing could have a positive impact on brain function and result in faster response times to dangerous stimuli in the environment.”

Another potential insight of the research is on the basic mechanisms of meditation or focused breathing. “When you inhale, you are in a sense synchronizing brain oscillations across the limbic network,” Zelano noted.

Anger more harmful to health of older adults than sadness

Source

NEUROSCIENCE NEWS

MAY 9, 2019

Summary: Experiencing daily anger increases inflammation and raises the risk of developing chronic illnesses, such as heart disease and cancer, in those aged 80 and over.

Source: APA

Anger may be more harmful to an older person’s physical health than sadness, potentially increasing inflammation, which is associated with such chronic illnesses as heart disease, arthritis and cancer, according to new research published by the American Psychological Association.

“As most people age, they simply cannot do the activities they once did, or they may experience the loss of a spouse or a decline in their physical mobility and they can become angry,” said Meaghan A. Barlow, MA, of Concordia University, lead author of the study, which was published in Psychology and Aging. “Our study showed that anger can lead to the development of chronic illnesses, whereas sadness did not.”

Barlow and her co-authors examined whether anger and sadness contributed to inflammation, an immune response by the body to perceived threats, such as infection or tissue damage. While inflammation, in general, helps protect the body and assists in healing, long-lasting inflammation can lead to chronic illnesses in old age, according to the authors.

The researchers collected and analyzed data from 226 older adults ages 59 to 93 from Montreal. They grouped participants as being in early old age, 59 to 79 years old, or advanced old age, 80 years old and older.

Over one week, participants completed short questionnaires about how angry or sad they felt. The authors also measured inflammation from blood samples and asked participants if they had any age-related chronic illnesses.

“We found that experiencing anger daily was related to higher levels of inflammation and chronic illness for people 80 years old and older, but not for younger seniors,” said study co-author Carsten Wrosch, PhD, also of Concordia University. “Sadness, on the other hand, was not related to inflammation or chronic illness.”

Sadness may help older seniors adjust to challenges such as age-related physical and cognitive declines because it can help them disengage from goals that are no longer attainable, said Barlow.

This study showed that not all negative emotions are inherently bad and can be beneficial under certain circumstances, she explained.

“Anger is an energizing emotion that can help motivate people to pursue life goals,” said Barlow. “Younger seniors may be able to use that anger as fuel to overcome life’s challenges and emerging age-related losses and that can keep them healthier. Anger becomes problematic for adults once they reach 80 years old, however, because that is when many experience irreversible losses and some of life’s pleasures fall out of reach.”

 

This study showed that not all negative emotions are inherently bad and can be beneficial under certain circumstances, she explained. The image is in the public domain.

The authors suggested that education and therapy may help older adults reduce anger by regulating their emotions or by offering better-coping strategies to manage the inevitable changes that accompany aging.

“If we better understand which negative emotions are harmful, not harmful or even beneficial to older people, we can teach them how to cope with loss in a healthy way,” said Barlow. “This may help them let go of their anger.”

ABOUT THIS NEUROSCIENCE RESEARCH ARTICLE

Source:
APA
Media Contacts: 
Michael Shulman – APA
Image Source:
The image is in the public domain.

Original Research: Open access
“Is anger, but not sadness, associated with chronic inflammation and illness in older adulthood?”. Barlow, Meaghan A.; Wrosch, Carsten; Gouin, Jean-Philippe; Kunzmann, Ute.
Psychology and Aging. doi:10.1037/pag0000348

Abstract

Is anger, but not sadness, associated with chronic inflammation and illness in older adulthood?

The discrete emotion theory of affective aging postulates that anger, but not sadness, becomes increasingly maladaptive during older adulthood in predicting health-relevant physiological processes and chronic disease (Kunzmann & Wrosch, 2018). However, it is largely unknown whether different negative emotions have distinct functional consequences in the development of older adults’ physical disease. To start examining this possibility, we investigated whether older adults’ daily experiences of anger and sadness were differentially associated with two biomarkers of chronic low-grade inflammation (interleukin-6 [IL-6] and C-reactive protein [CRP]) and the number of chronic illnesses (e.g., heart disease, cancer, etc.). In addition, we examined whether such divergent associations would become paramount in advanced, as compared with early, old age. A community-dwelling study of 226 older adults (age 59 to 93; M = 74.99, SD = 7.70) assessed participants’ anger and sadness over 1 week, inflammatory processes, number of chronic illnesses, and relevant covariates. Regression analysis showed that anger predicted higher levels of IL-6 and chronic illness in advanced, but not in early, old age. The age effect of anger on chronic illness was mediated by increased IL-6 levels. Sadness exerted a reversed, but nonsignificant, association with IL-6 and chronic illness, independent of age. No emotion or age effects were obtained for CRP. The study’s findings inform theories of health, emotion, and life span development by pointing to the age-related importance of discrete negative emotions in predicting a major physiological pathway to physical health across older adulthood.

Scientists May Have Just Found a Way to Prevent the Brain From Aging

Source link

themindunleashed.com

Elias Marat

Apr 5, 2019

A team of Stanford neuroscientists may have stumbled onto a way to prevent the brain from aging–and if the results of tests on old mice are any indicator, the research is promising.

Hailed as a “stunning piece of research” by New Atlas, the study–published in peer-reviewed international journal Nature–managed to pinpoint a specific gene called CD22 that is responsible for cognitive loss resulting from aging. The gene, common to both mice and humans, apparently degrades certain cells’ ability to conduct normal brain activity.

That same gene was found to be three times more prevalent among older mice than younger ones in follow-on experiments.

With this data in mind, the researchers devised antibodies to block CD22–specifically, molecules that bind to proteins and can be generated in a lab.

The Stanford team then injected the antibodies into the hippocampus on one side of the brains of the test mice. After a month of injecting the CD22-blocking antibody into both sides of their brains, the mice that received the injection began outperforming their counterparts in various intelligence tests.

The researchers believe that this is because as we age, the microglia–the class of brain cells responsible for routine cleanup and immune responses–decline and lose their ability to engage in the sort of “maintenance” work that brains require.

In a statement, study author and professor of neurology and neurological sciences Tony Wyss-Coray said:

“The mice became smarter … Blocking CD22 on their microglia restored their cognitive function to the level of younger mice. CD22 is a new target we think can be exploited for treatment of neurodegenerative diseases.”

This research could open the path to reverse a range of cognitive effects of aging–including such diseases as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.

Wyss-Coray noted:

“Many of the genes whose high-risk variants have recently been linked to Alzheimer’s disease are known to be active in the brain only in microglia … Microglial genes’ activation patterns are abnormal in Alzheimer’s patients, and in other neurodegenerative disorders including Parkinson’s disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.”

Yet the new research could be promising, especially when–or if–it eventually reaches human trials. The Stanford team remains optimistic, with Wyss-Coray noting:

“We think we may have discovered a way to get these cells back on track and make them work the way they used to when we were young.”

CRISPR twins who had their genes edited also had their brains altered to make them smarter, scientists believe

Source: CRISPR twins who had their genes edited also had their brains altered to make them smarter, scientists believe / Boing Boing

boingboing.net

Feb 22, 2019

Scientists believe that the “CRISPR twins,” who had their genes edited last year before birth, will now have an easier time learning and memorizing. Apparently, the gene alteration, which was meant to make the girls immune to HIV, also altered their brains.

According to Technology Review:

Now, new research shows that the same alteration introduced into the girls’ DNA, to a gene called CCR5, not only makes mice smarter but also improves human brain recovery after stroke, and could be linked to greater success in school.

“The answer is likely yes, it did affect their brains,” says Alcino J. Silva, a neurobiologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, whose lab has been uncovering a major new role for the CCR5 gene in memory and the brain’s ability to form new connections.

“The simplest interpretation is that those mutations will probably have an impact on cognitive function in the twins,” says Silva. He says the exact effect on the girls’ cognition is impossible to predict, and “that is why it should not be done.”

There is no evidence that He Jiankui, the lead scientist from the Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen, China, set out to alter their intelligence. He is now under investigation for the controversial experiment that “has been widely condemned as irresponsible.”

 

Hearing Hate Speech Primes the Brain For Hateful Actions

Researchers report on how the brain is spurred into action by hearing certain words. They propose a new simulation theory that perceiving words can drive brain systems into states almost identical to what would be evoked by directly experiencing what the word describes.

“Dan Slobin suggested that habitual ways of speaking lead to habitual ways of thinking about the world. The language that you hear gives you a vocabulary for discussing the world, and that vocabulary, by producing simulations, gives you habits of mind.”

Source: Hearing Hate Speech Primes the Brain For Hateful Actions – Neuroscience News

Neuroscience News

January 12, 2019

Summary: Researchers report on how the brain is spurred into action by hearing certain words. They propose a new simulation theory that perceiving words can drive brain systems into states almost identical to what would be evoked by directly experiencing what the word describes.

Source: The Conversation.

A mark on a page, an online meme, a fleeting sound. How can these seemingly insignificant stimuli lead to acts as momentous as participation in a racist rally or the massacre of innocent worshippers? Psychologists, neuroscientists, linguists and philosophers are developing a new theory of language understanding that’s starting to provide answers.

Current research shows that humans understand language by activating sensory, motor and emotional systems in the brain. According to this new simulation theory, just reading words on a screen or listening to a podcast activates areas of the brain in ways similar to the activity generated by literally being in the situation the language describes. This process makes it all the more easy to turn words into actions.

As a cognitive psychologist, my own research has focused on developing simulation theory, testing it, and using it to create reading comprehension interventions for young children.

Simulations are step one

Traditionally, linguists have analyzed language as a set of words and rules that convey ideas. But how do ideas become actions?

Simulation theory tries to answer that question. In contrast, many traditional theories about language processing give action short shrift.

Simulation theory proposes that processing words depends on activity in people’s neural and behavioral systems of action, perception and emotion. The idea is that perceiving words drives your brain systems into states that are nearly identical to what would be evoked by directly experiencing what the words describe.

Consider the sentence “The lovers held hands while they walked along the moonlit tropical beach.” According to simulation theory, when you read these words, your brain’s motor system simulates the actions of walking; that is, the neural activity elicited by comprehending the words is similar to the neural activity generated by literal walking. Similarly, your brain’s perceptual systems simulate the sight, sounds and feel of the beach. And your emotional system simulates the feelings implied by the sentence.

So words themselves are enough to trigger simulations in motor, perceptual and emotional neural systems. Your brain creates a sense of being there: The motor system is primed for action and the emotional system motivates those actions.

Then, one can act on the simulation much as he’d act in the real situation. For example, language associating an ethnic group with “bad hombres” could invoke an emotional simulation upon seeing members of the group. If that emotional reaction is strong enough, it may in turn motivate action – maybe making a derogatory remark or physically lashing out.

Although simulation theory is still under scientific scrutiny, there have been many successful tests of its predictions. For example, using neuroimaging techniques that track blood flow in the brain, researchers found that listening to action words such as “lick,” “pick” and “kick” produces activity in areas of the brain’s motor cortex that are used to control the mouth, the hand and the leg, respectively. Hearing a sentence such as “The ranger saw an eagle in the sky” generates a mental image using the visual cortex. And using Botox to block activity in the muscles that furrow the brow affects the emotional system and slows understanding of sentences conveying angry content. These examples demonstrate the connections between processing speech and motor, sensory and emotional systems.

Recently, my colleague psychologist Michael McBeath, our graduate student Christine S. P. Yu and I discovered yet another robust connection between language and the emotional system.

Consider pairs of single-syllable English words that differ only in whether the vowel sound is “eee” or “uh,” such as “gleam-glum” and “seek-suck.” Using all such pairs in English – there are about 90 of them – we asked people to judge which word in the pair was more positive. Participants selected the word with the “eee” sound two-thirds of the time. This is a remarkable percentage because if linguistic sounds and emotions were unrelated and people were picking at the rate of chance, only half of the “eee” words would have been judged as the more positive.

We propose that this relation arose because saying “eee” activates the same muscles and neural systems as used when smiling – or saying “cheese!” In fact, mechanically inducing a smile – as by holding a pencil in your teeth without using your lips – lightens your mood. Our new research shows that saying words that use the smile muscles can have a similar effect.

We tested this idea by having people chew gum while judging the words. Chewing gum blocks the systematic activation of the smile muscles. Sure enough, while chewing gum, the judged difference between the “eee” and “uh” words was only half as strong. We also demonstrated the same effects in China using pairs of Mandarin words containing the “eee” and “uh” sounds.

Practice through simulation makes actions easier

Of course, motivating someone to commit a hate crime requires much more than uttering “glum” or “suck.”

Inflammatory words can prime a mind.

But consider that simulations become quicker with repetition. When one first hears a new word or concept, creating its simulation can be a mentally laborious process. A good communicator can help by using hand gestures to convey the motor simulation, pointing to objects or pictures to help create the perceptual simulation and using facial expressions and voice modulation to induce the emotional simulation.

It makes sense that the echo chamber of social media provides the practice needed to both speed and shape the simulation. The mental simulation of “caravan” can change from an emotionally neutral string of camels to an emotionally charged horde of drug dealers and rapists. And, through the repeated simulation that comes from repeatedly reading similar posts, the message becomes all the more believable, as each repetition produces another instance of almost being there to see it with your own eyes.

Psycholinguist Dan Slobin suggested that habitual ways of speaking lead to habitual ways of thinking about the world. The language that you hear gives you a vocabulary for discussing the world, and that vocabulary, by producing simulations, gives you habits of mind. Just as reading a scary book can make you afraid to go in the ocean because you simulate (exceedingly rare) shark attacks, encountering language about other groups of people (and their exceedingly rare criminal behavior) can lead to a skewed view of reality.

Practice need not always lead down an emotional rabbit hole, though, because alternative simulations and understandings can be created. A caravan can be simulated as families in distress who have the grit, energy and skills to start a new life and enrich new communities.

Because simulation creates a sense of being in a situation, it motivates the same actions as the situation itself. Simulating fear and anger literally makes you fearful and angry and promotes aggression. Simulating compassion and empathy literally makes you act kindly. We all have the obligation to think critically and to speak words that become humane actions.