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 Posted by Pennywise on Wednesday August 13, @11:04PM
from the things-that-make-you-wish-you-were-dead dept.
Have you ever gotten an earworm? There's a good reason that sounds like a horrifying parasite -- it's another name for "getting a song stuck in your head". James Kellaris, consumer psychologist and University of Cincinnati researcher, has been studying "earworms". His findings show that up to 98% of people get a song stuck in their heads.
The study also found some common offenders, including the Kit-Kat jingle ("Gimme a break"), "Who Let the Dogs Out," Queen's "We Will Rock You," the theme to "Mission: Impossible," "YMCA," "Whoomp, There It Is," "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" and "It's a Small World After All."
Check here or here for the whole story. As with the previous CogNews article about getting songs stuck in your head, the both cause and cure remain elusive.
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Re: Earworms
by Lu J. on Monday August 01, @11:33PM
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in my youth there was a show on saturday mornings called the banana splits..... it was awful, but the theme was a haunting earworm that stayed with me a long time, though the experience was not unpleasant...... the tune was a simple 123- - 123 - 4
123 - - 123 - 4 ......played over and over......i believe its very simplicity, like an indian tom tom rhythm, caused the effect.....Lu from hannibal, mo.
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Re: Earworms
by Andrew Lodge on Thursday November 24, @02:33AM
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I noticed your recent article on the phenomena of earworms....that is in fact our company name and we have put this phenomena to a positive and educational use....it may be a good follow up to your story!
We recently demonstrated our unique concept at a Cambridge Press exhibition which sparked a BBC & ITV News Documentary, just launching now...the earworms system is a world first and is poised to change the face of learning: www.earwormslearning.com
Link to St. Johns (Cambridge) Press exhibition : http://www.holdsworth-associates.co.uk/St_John_s_Press_Day_2005.230.0.html
Press release: (for editing)
ACCELERATED LEARNING - THE NEXT GENERATION!
New Earworms Musical Language Courses Dramatically Increase Retention
Ever wondered why you just can’t get that song out of your head? Using the same brain function that annoyingly causes us to repeat catchy tunes (earworms) all day, a revolutionary new approach to language learning has been shown to boost language retention by up to 80%.
Earworms Musical Brain Trainer (mbt) offers unique musical language courses that anchor foreign words and phrases into long-term memory. The idea was born when programme creator Marlon Lodge started using music to help his language pupils remember phrases in his job as a language tutor. The class-room results were phenominal so he teamed up with brother and business professional Andrew Lodge, to design Earworms (mbt).
Launching now with 6 language courses (The Rapid Series) on audio CD and with more courses in the pipeline, the Earworms programmes mimic the way we are taught as children, using music and tunes to passively teach vocabulary with minimal concentration. Fitting in perfectly with today’s busy lifestyles, users can learn a language in a traffic jam, at the gym, doing the ironing…wherever, whenever…just by listening to groovy songs.
Rhythm and words, i.e. song and verse, have always been a very powerful memory aid, and this is supported by recent scientific research. The advertising industry knows only too well how powerful music can be in getting the message across with brainwashing-like jingles and sound-bites. Earworms (mbt) puts this potential to a positive educational use.
While most of us are exposed to English in nursery rhymes and music before we can talk, music has not yet been exploited as a tool to learn a second language. Marlon is a great advocate of the idea that learning has to be made less academic and more accessible.
“Many people are reluctant to begin learning something new after they leave school, but as Mark Twain once said, ‘My education started the day I left school.’ Earworms is very much about giving people an easy handle on learning, and what easier way to learn than simply by listening to music, something we all enjoy”
Earworms already counts singing sensation Katie Melua, business giant Theo Paphitis and Dragons’ Den star Doug Richard among its users. The audio CD courses are currently available at Bookshops, through Amazon and directly from www.earwormslearning.com
- Ends -
earworms (mbt) - Accelerated learning - in a nutshell:
Teaching approach. How to memorise the target language.
Ever wondered why you just can’t get that song out of your head? earworms uses this same brain function to boost the retention of words and phrases when learning a language. It's a well known fact that we use only a fraction of our brain power and traditional book learning is now recognised as not suiting every learner.
Course author Marlon Lodge recognised this early on in the context of his teaching and has developed simple techniques which open up and exploit more of the brain's native power. He explains: “Music is an ideal medium for learning. It gets to deeper subconscious levels of your memory, and most people really enjoy it….Although you feel that you are just listening to music, subconsciously you are taking in masses of verbs, nouns and connecting words, and picking up the correct accent all the time!”
The idea is as simple as it is old. Before the age of writing, ancient historical events (e.g. in the Finnish sagas) were recorded in verse and song form for easy memorisation. In his book 'Songlines' Bruce Chatwin describes how the Australian Aborigines were able to navigate their way across hundreds of miles of desert to their ancestral hunting grounds without maps. And how? The extensive lyrics of their traditional songs were exact descriptions of the routes!
Rhythm and words, i.e. song and verse, have always been a very powerful memory aid, and this is supported by recent scientific research*. The advertising industry knows only too well how powerful music can be in getting the message across with brainwashing-like jingles and sound-bites. earworms (mbt) puts this potential to a positive educational use.
What you learn. How the courses are structured.
earworms adopts the so-called lexical approach to language. In essence, this means we look at language in terms of whole meaningful chunks, then break these down into their component bite-sized, easily digestible, easily absorbable parts and then reconstruct them. You not only learn complete, immediately useful phrases, you also intuitively learn something about the structure (the grammar) of the language.
These ‘chunks' which the learner can ‘mix and match', gradually build up to cover whole areas of the language.
This may sound logical to the layman, but it is only very recently that this approach (as expounded by Michael Lewis in his book “The Lexical Approach”) has been taken up in the classroom.
*In the March 2005 issue of the journal “Nature” researchers at Dartmouth College in the US reported that they had pinpointed the region of the brain where ‘earworms' or catchy tunes reside, the auditory cortex. They found that the sounds and words that have actually been heard can be readily recalled from the auditory cortex where the brain can perceptually hear or reconstruct them. Music, it seems, is the ideal catalyst to memorisation.
The UK demand for effective language learning.
Recent news and developments*
The UK government and the business community are insisting that we dramatically improve our language skills. Britain's economic future will be “compromised” unless more students study foreign languages, according to Sir Digby Jones, the director-general of the CBI, and the government is supporting its appeal with structured programmes and financial backing, investing an extra £115 million in promoting language learning in 2005 plus £10 million for each year thereafter.
“Anyone who is serious about doing business in international context needs to wake up to the need for languages,” said Hugh Morgan Williams from the CBI. But the take–up of language learning programmes does not match this latent demand.
The reasons have a lot to do with our preconceptions of language learning – that it must be difficult, time consuming and dry, and this pretty much reflects the state of affairs in the UK language learning scene.
Learning through music and repetition is especially effective for young learners!
Given the widespread popularity of pop music especially in Britain, and the fact that music has been scientifically proven to be an excellent memory aid, earworms is a language learning tool ‘made in heaven’ for UK learners, especially young learners who the government has in its sights at the moment. The system has been extremely successful in classroom tests, and the resonance among teachers and pupils has been more than enthusiastic.
A common reaction has been “Why hasn't this been done before?” or “At last a learning product that really helps you to remember!”
Why hasn't music been used more in education up to now?
Imagine kids at school getting a CD of hip-hop songs with all the historical dates or all the French verbs they have to learn, or all the countries and capitals of the world! Wouldn't that make their (and teachers') school lives much easier, much more fun, much more successful.
Rest assured we are working on it.
Best Regards
Andrew Lodge
Managing Director
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earworms (mbt) Ltd.
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Web: www.earwormslearning.com
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Re: Earworms
by sally on Monday October 29, @09:04AM
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If you suffer from earworms you might as well put them to good use! Earworms (musical brain trainer) can give you the gift of language. Set to funky music, they have captured essential phrases. It's unique in that it’s effortless – just play the CD in the car, at the gym, or as a download on your MP3 player while jogging, and after a few repetitions key words and phrases and are embedded in your mind, ready for instant recall when required.
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Earworms
