Music lessons help decode emotion

A published study done by Thompson, Schellenberg, and Husain in 2004 demonstrate the value of music lessons for decoding emotion in speech. The study consisted of 3 experiments. They found that "music lessons might nurture a basic skill of emotional intelligence by engaging, developing, and refining processes used for perceiving emotions expressed musically, which, in turn, could have consequences for perceiving emotions expressed in speech.

In each of the experiments, they found that both children and adults who had some music training were able to distinguish between the emotions of anger, fear, happiness, and sadness--even among those who only had 1 year of lessons. The researchers suggest "that formal training in music enhances listeners' ability to decode emotions conveyed by prosody in speech."

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