July 2017 - News!

AIRS News  

• Singing improves the quality of life for people living with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), according to new research directed by Stephen Clift  a nd the Sidney De Haan Research Centre for Arts and Health.  See report and video. Link  
  

• New study published in Psychology of Music documenting remarkable natural ability of toddler voice range and melodic accuracy: Adults recognize toddlers’ song renditions, Helga Gudmundsdottir, University of Iceland, and Sandra Trehub, University of Toronto Mississauga, 2017. This new research explores the singing ability of toddlers 16 months to 3 years of age by examining North American adults’ ability to identify toddlers’ renditions of familiar tunes sung with foreign lyrics.  Link 
  

• Congratulations to Ella Dubinsky (student of Frank Russo,  Ryerson University) for recognition as one of the notable "Best Poster Abstracts in a Flash" winners at the Neurosciences and Music VI conference in Boston, for her poster: Benefits of music training in older adults with age-related hearing loss. Also on the Program were other AIRS members, either chairing or presenting (see below) or presenting posters: 
  

  • ​Jazz Improvisation as a Model of Creativity: A Cross-Sectional and Longitudinal Study
    Psyche Loui, Wesleyan University, Middletown, USA
    

  • Musical function modification through the use of noninvasive Brain Stimulation, Gottfried Schlaug, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA
    

  • BORN TO BE MUSICAL: WHAT WE CAN LEARN FROM STUDYING MUSICAL PRODIGIES, Chaired by Isabelle Peretz, University of Montreal
    

  • RHYTHM AND OPTIMAL DEVELOPMENT: TRANSLATION OF BASIC RESEARCH TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF EVIDENCE-BASED INTERVENTIONS, Chairs: Laurel Trainor (McMaster University) and Devin McAuley. Laurel also presented a session: Auditory rhythmic deficits in Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD). 
    

  • PERSPECTIVES ON THE EXTRA-MUSICAL BENEFITS OF MUSIC TRAINING ACROSS THE LIFESPAN: CONVERGENT EVIDENCE AND LINGERING QUESTIONS, Chairs: Frank Russo (Ryerson University) and Assal Habibi. [including focus on choirs and home-training regime for older adults]
    

  • Neural correlates of cognitive and emotional development in children engaged in music training, Assal Habibi, Beatriz Illari, Antonio Damasio, Hanna Damasio, University of Southern California [singing tests incorporated into the study protocol]
    

• The symposium on singing entitled "Studies of singing: abilities and well-being from infancy to senior years" is on the program of
  

• the meeting of the Society for Music Perception and Cognition to be held at University of California, San Diego, July 30-August 3rd.
  

  AIRS members are presenting the following papers:
  

  • Infants Can Categorize Singing and Speaking, Christine D. Tsang,  Associate Professor, Department of Psychology, Huron College, University of Western Ontario, Simone Falk, CNRS / Université Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris-3, FRANCE
    

  • Developing innovative techniques for testing singing ability in 3-year-olds, Helga Rut Gudmundsdottir  (Associate Professor, School of Education, University of Iceland;  currently Fulbright Fellow at Columbia University, New York)
    

  • Testing domain-based vs domain-general theories of creativity: comparing vocal and speech improvisation in the AIRS Test Battery of Singing Skills in young adults, Annabel J. Cohen, Eric da Silva, Kyle Dutton, University of Prince Edward Island; Bing-Yi Pan Department of Psychology, Concordia University, Montreal, QC. 
    

  • Applying SingFit Technology to the distribution of music as medicine for older populations. Andy Tubman and Rachel Francine, Music Health Technologies, Los Angeles.
    

• Please send items for next newsletter to airs@upei.ca
   
  

Conferences, Symposiums, Workshops   view all upcoming

• 1st International Workshop on Multimodal Interaction for Education (MIE 2017), November 13, 2017, Glasgow, Scotland. The deadline for submitting contributions has been extended to July 30, 2017.  Link
  

• The International Symposium on Singing and Song is happening as a back-to--back event with Podium 2018 on June 27-29, 2018. The Call for Presentations for this Symposium are due October 15, 2017.   Link
  

• PEI Singfest in conjunction with World Day of Singing will take place October 19 to 21 - with a celebration of singing event for artists, and AIRS community  partners October 19, activities in schools October 20, and a massed choir event in the Charlottetown Confederation Court Mall  October 19.
  

• Open Repositories 2018, June 4-7, 2018, Montana State University, Boseman, Montana USA.   Link 
  

• 4th International Digital Libraries for Musicology workshop (DLfM 2017), Saturday 28th October 2017, Shanghai Conservatory of Music, Shanghai, China. Proceedings to be published in ACM ICPS.    Link  
  

• 2nd Conference on Computer Simulation of Musical Creativity, Open University in Milton Keynes (UK), 11-13 Sept 2017.    Link
  

Student Opportunities

• Grant Opportunity - Canadian: seeking bold ideas to improve reproductive, maternal, newborn and child health in humanitarian contexts. Deadline for proposals is August 3, 2017  Link 
  

• The Cognitive Science Departement  of École Normale Supérieure in Paris (Département d'études cognitives, DEC) aims to recruit advanced undergraduate international students in Cognitive Science and in Linguistics.  Link