A study at Ben-Gurion University in Israel has found that simple childhood sing-along songs that incorporate handclapping help improve children’s cognitive abilities, according to livescience.com.
Researchers compared early-age elementary students who were exposed to hand-clapping songs and those who weren’t, and the differences were striking.
For ten weeks, Dr. Idit Sulkin visited several first, second and third-grade classrooms. She placed some classes in music appreciation programs, or hand-clapping song training. While another group remained in environments without musical stimuli.
“Within a very short period of time the children who, until then, hadn’t taken part in such activities caught up in their cognitive abilities to those who did,” she said. However, she observed that the advancements only occurred for children in hand-clapping classes.
Sulkin realized that early-age children are attracted to hand-clapping-like songs. “The hand-clapping songs appear naturally in children’s lives around the age of seven, and disappear around the age of 10. In this narrow window, these activities serve as a developmental platform to enhance children’s needs — emotional, sociological, physiological and cognitive. It’s a transition stage that leads them to the next phases of growing up.”
While the study was limited to children, Sulkin also questioned adults to see the effect music and hand-clapping exposure has on them. She noted that even though many adults may feel silly about these exercises, “they report feeling more alert and in a better mood” once having performed them.