Browsing by Person "Kaviani, H."

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Can music lessons increase the performance of preschool children in IQ tests?
(Springer-Verlag, 2014) Kaviani, H.; Mirbaha, H.; Pournaseh, M.; Sagan, Olivia
The impact of music on human cognition has a distinguished history as a research topic in psychology. The focus of the present study was on investigating the effects of music instruction on the cognitive development of preschool children. From a sample of 154 preschool children of Tehran kindergartens, 60 children aged between 5 and 6 were randomly assigned to two groups, one receiving music lessons and the other (matched for sex, age and mother's educational level) not taking part in any music classes. Children were tested before the start of the course of music lessons and at its end with 4 subtests of the Tehran-Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale (TSB). The experimental group participated in twelve 75-min weekly music lessons. Statistical analysis showed significant IQ increase in participants receiving music lessons, specifically on the TSB verbal reasoning and short-term memory subtests. The numerical and visual/abstract reasoning abilities did not differ for the two groups after lessons. These data support studies that found similar skills enhancements in preschool children, despite vast differences in the setting in which the instruction occurred. These findings appear to be consistent with some neuroimaging and neurological observations which are discussed in the paper.
Emotion-Related Words in Persian Dictionaries: Culture, Meaning and Emotion Theory
(2015-09) Kaviani, H.; Sagan, Olivia; Pournaseh, M.
Aimes: Vocabulary, written or oral, may potentially mirror the attitudes, emotionality, thinking styles, mentality and cultural tendencies among people. This research aimed to scrutinise the emotion-related words (ERWs) vs. the cognition-related words (CRWs) of three Persian dictionaries (namely, Moeen, Amid and Moaser), exploring cultural differences in terms of positive/negative and somatic/non-somatic aspects. Method: All entries in these three dictionaries were scrutinised by three independent judges all of whom were psychologists. The final judgments incorporated feedback which included descriptive and qualitative comments provided by a cognitive linguist. Non-parametric data (frequencies and ratios) on somatic/non-somatic, positive/negative and common/uncommon components of the target words were analysed by SPSS for Windows v19. Results: The results show that the ratio of negative ERWs is higher than positive ERWs, compared to both positive and negative CRWs. Moreover, 30-45% of ERWs were somatic (contained body-related component/s). Conclusion: The findings appear to be in line with theories suggesting that people with Eastern cultural backgrounds are more likely to express their feelings through body-related words; a fact that may be correlated with the high level of somatisation symptoms in Eastern countries.