Changing positive and negative affects through music experiences: a study with university students.

BACKGROUND: Currently, there are few empirical studies that demonstrate the effects of music on specific emotions, especially in the educational context. For this reason, this study was carried out to examine the impact of music to identify affective changes after exposure to three musical stimuli. METHODS: The participants were 71 university students engaged in a music education course and none of them were musicians. Changes in the affective state of non-musical student teachers were studied after listening to three pieces of music. An inter-subject repeated measures ANOVA test was carried out using the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) to measure their affective state. RESULTS: The results revealed that: (i) the three musical experiences were beneficial in increasing positive affects and reducing negative affects, with significant differences between the interaction of Music Experiences × Moment (pre-post); (ii) listening to Mahler's sad fifth symphony reduced more negative affects than the other experimental conditions; (iii) performing the blues had the highest positive effects. CONCLUSIONS: These findings provide applied keys aspects for music education and research, as they show empirical evidence on how music can modify specific affects of personal experience.

The Garden and Landscape as an Interdisciplinary Resource Between Experimental Science and Artistic-Musical Expression: Analysis of Competence Development in Student Teachers.

The garden is a major educational resource that can be used for all areas of knowledge from an interdisciplinary perspective as it reflects the complexity and interactions of the natural environment. This research was carried out in the academic years 2017-2018 and 2018-2019 with 418 participants of from the second, third, and fourth year of the Degree in Primary Education at the University of Valencia. The use of the garden and the landscape is analyzed as a non-formal context for training primary school teachers through sensory experiences that contribute to the development of scientific and artistic competencies. The study focused on the relationship between natural sounds and emotions to promote the environmental awareness and active listening that are necessary to improve auditory perception and reflect on health problems caused by noise pollution. During the project, we discovered the synergies between experimental sciences and artistic-musical expression and their importance for developing university students' competencies in the professional, personal, and collective spheres. The activities consisted of (1) a walking tour from the Faculty of Education to the garden at 1 km from the center, to reflect on the origin and characteristics of sound, emotions and their relationship with music; (2) sensory experiences in the garden through visual and auditory interaction with the landscape; and (3) an immersion in quasi-real scenarios created by virtual reality. The analysis was carried out by means of an ad hoc questionnaire with Likert-type items focused on aspects of the usefulness of gardens and the activities involved in the general and specific skills of the degree and open questions for reflections on emotional health, environmental sustainability, and artistic-musical creation as a representation of the environment. The results show the importance of the garden as a resource for training of primary teachers in a holistic and global approach that contributes to the development of teaching skills and the acquisition of knowledge based on sensory experiences with the landscape.