Computational elucidation of the effects induced by music making

Effect of group impromptu music therapy on improving test anxiety and emotional regulation ability in medical students

Introduction

Test anxiety, a prevalent psychological issue among medical students, can profoundly impact their social, behavioral, and emotional development. This condition is significantly associated with challenges in emotional regulation, and to date, no effective clinical treatment has been established to address it. This study aimed to investigate the potential benefits and effects of group impromptu music therapy (GIMT) on enhancing emotional regulation skills and alleviating test anxiety in medical students.

Methods

A total of 29 participants in the experimental group and 30 participants in the control group were finally included for data analysis. Four weeks prior to the final exams, the experimental group commenced GIMT treatment, while the control group did not receive any intervention. Following the four-week intervention period, both groups were assessed using standardized scales and follow-up semi-structured interviews.

Results

The results revealed that students given the GIMT intervention reported significantly lower levels of test anxiety, as measured by the Test Anxiety Scale (TAS), and experienced fewer difficulties with emotional regulation, as indicated by the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS). Additionally, these students achieved higher examination scores than the control group. Qualitative data from semi-structured interviews further supported these observations.

Discussion

Collectively, these findings demonstrate that GIMT is an effective method for enhancing the emotional regulation abilities of medical students and for relieving the symptoms of test anxiety, ultimately resulting in better academic performance. The study also indicates that GIMT could be a promising clinical auxiliary method for dealing with test anxiety and should be considered for inclusion in the curriculum of healthcare professional education programs. Nonetheless, more efforts are needed to address the limitations of this method before it can be widely used for clinical practice.

Computational elucidation of nonverbal behavior and body language in music therapy

Music therapy has shown efficacy in serious and chronic conditions, mental disorders, and disabilities. However, there is still much to explore regarding the mechanisms through which music interventions exert their effects. A typical session involves interactions between the therapist, the client, and the musical work itself, and to help address the challenges of capturing and comprehending its dynamics, we extend our general computational paradigm (CP) for analyzing the expressive and social behavioral processes in arts therapies. The extension includes bodily and nonverbal aspects of the behavior, offering additional insights into the client's emotional states and engagement. We have used this version of the CP, which employs AI pose estimation technology, image processing, and audio analysis, to capture therapy-related psychometrics and their intra- and inter-session analysis. The CP is applied in a real-world proof-of-concept study, and the results enable us to pinpoint meaningful events and emergent properties not captured by the human eye, complementing the therapist's interpretations. The resulting data may also be useful in other scientific and clinical areas.

Computational Paradigm to Elucidate the Effects of Arts-Based Approaches: Art and Music Studies and Implications for Research and Therapy

Art therapy and music therapy, as well as other arts-based approaches and interventions, help to mitigate symptoms in serious and chronic diseases and to improve the well-being and quality of life for both healthy individuals and patients. Artistic creation is also researched and practiced intending to empower and understand individuals, groups, and communities. However, much research is required in order to learn how arts-based approaches operate and to enhance their effectivity. The complex and simultaneous occurrences involving the dynamics of the creation work, the client, and the therapist in a typical arts setting are difficult to grasp, consequently affecting their objective analyses. Here we employ our Computational Paradigm which enables the quantitative and rigorous tracking, analyzing, and documenting of the underlying dynamic processes, and describe its application in recent past and current real-world art and music studies with human participants. We aim to study emergent artistic behaviors of individuals and collectives in response to art and music making. Significant insights obtained include demographic variation factors such as gender and age, empirical behavioral patterns, and quantitative expressiveness and its change. We discuss the implications of the findings for therapy and research, such as causality for behavioral diversification and audio-visual cross-modality, and also offer directions for future applications and technology enhancements.