The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of a short-term preschool music program with creativity, bimanual gross motor training, and vocal development on preschool children’s inhibition. Inhibition is the key factor in preschool children’s executive functions development between 3–5 years. Thirty-six preschool children were randomly assigned to music or Lego training, a comparable control task. We administered neuropsychological measures pre- and post-training. Results of a repeated measures ANOVA on the Matching Familiar Figures Test (MFFT), a task requiring inhibition and visual discrimination, indicated a significant time by group interaction, with fewer errors committed post-training by the music group compared to controls. However, only a main effect of time was found for the second inhibition task, the Day/Night Stroop Task, a task requiring inhibition of a dominant verbal response. Music training in early childhood that includes an emphasis on bimanual coordination in gross motor movements may contribute to enhanced inhibition performance on complex tasks.

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The effect of domain knowledge on students' memory for vocabulary terms was investigated. Participants were 142 college students (94 education majors and 48 business majors). The measure of domain knowledge was the number of courses completed in the major. Students recalled three different lists (control, education, and business) of 20 words. Knowledge effects were estimated controlling for academic aptitude, academic achievement, and general memory ability. Domain-specific knowledge consistently predicted recall, above and beyond the effect of these control variables. Moreover, nonlinear models better represented the relation between knowledge and memory, with very similar functions predicting recall in both knowledge domains. Specifically, early in the majors more classes corresponded with increased memory performance, but a plateau period, when more classes did not result in higher recall, was evident for both majors. Longitudinal research is needed to explore at what point in learning novices' performance begins to resemble experts' performance.

The purpose of this study was to examine facial affect of young children who completed a singing task that included imitation and improvisation. Eighty-nine children (4–6 years: 45 male and 44 female participants) completed three singing conditions from a standard singing test battery (i.e., Advancing Interdisciplinary Research in Singing-Test Battery of Singing Skills [AIRS-TBSS]). These included singing a favorite song, imitating a song, and improvising a song ending. Facial affect was analyzed with Noldus FaceReader software, and subjective responses also were collected. Results revealed children exhibited a happy emotion most prominently during the improvisation and favorite song conditions compared with the imitation condition. However, a higher percentage of surprised emotions were found during the imitation condition. Frequency analysis revealed a significantly different range and final note for the improvisation condition compared with imitation. Children’s self-reported ratings of happiness were related to their displayed facial affect (i.e., happiness) scores in FaceReader ( p < .05). Qualitative data analysis revealed three emerging themes of song familiarity, object association, and song preference. Children exhibited more positive affect when singing a favorite song or improvising. Based on the type of vocal performance task, it is necessary to consider how young children respond to vocal tasks.