Participants in the Zinn Piano Program and Preschool Piano Kids! have recently posted their very own website. See and hear them play their favorite pieces by visiting www.pianokidsite.com.
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Welcome to Pianoweb.net!
Pianoweb Overview
PIanoweb! is the piano website for clients of the Attainment Center for Education, an innovative program to help children excel in all aspects of their functioning through piano lessons. The Attainment Center for Education is dedicated to promoting optimal brain functioning through personalized interventions. We work with achievement of optimal functioning in psychological, emotional, and cognitive health. We utilize the latest technology and research in Cognitive Neuroscience, Developmental Psychology and Rehabilitation Psychology (health psychology) to offer cutting-edge programs that improve brain functions for optimal performance.
So far, the 21st century has seen a great deal of interest in higher-level functions of individuals who study piano, inspired by various findings in psychology, biology, cognitive neuroscience and the like. Our piano program works with every participant to target that individual's specific strengths and weaknesses in various behavioral, perceptual and cognitive domains. We also closely look at the cognitive neuroscience of skilled movement; more specifically, how it affects musical outcomes and changes in the brains of the participants. Together with other measurements of cognition, we work with a wide range of methods to develop psychological models of how people produce and learn music. We are also developing a virtual reality system to study how people best learn and perform piano music in artificial realities.
Our initial assessment process will identify currently known predictors of optimal cognitive health from psychology, biology and neuroscience. The initial process combines traditional methods of assessment (such as clinical interviews, scales, and other commonly used methods) with latest technology in brain imaging such as qEEG and other related methods providing a personalized profile of current levels of cognitive performance and cognitive skills. All participants gain thorough knowledge of how their own brains function through Cognitive EEG. Everyone has copies of their own brainmap!
We then converge what we learn from assessment and develop cognitive profile (how one performs cognitively) to allow us to develop goals specific to every individual. We develop what is called a 'treatment plan,' which is simply a list of goals for the individual. We then use the treatment plan to bring our world-class instruction to our clients. Utilizing this state-of-the-art technology, combined with essential piano instruction developed using the tenents of the Golden Age of Julliard, within the latest findings in psychology and neuroscience, combined with a comprehensive musicianship approach and integrated digital technology, the our advanced education program offers an instructional framework that is truly unique.
Zinn Piano Cognitive Development program is continually updated using major research findings from social, behavioral, developmental psychology, as well as latest discoveries in cognitive neuroscience. In addition, Zinn Piano Program is a research entity (Performing Arts Psychophysiology Research Institute), meaning that we continually test and revise our teaching methods based on the results of empirical research in the field as well as the findings at our learning facility. We are also pioneering a new field within performance psychology referred to as "Performing Arts Psychology." In the same vein as Sport Psychology, we seek an evidence-based approach for finding real solutions and applications to musicians. Performing Arts Psychology involves finding ways to help students optimize their performance level through technique training, education, cognitive coping techniques, biofeedback , as well as stress and pain management techniques.
“After 23 years of research and seeing all phases of artists in the clinic, we know that 99% of artists' medical problems are stress-related problems. We now know that these problems start in childhood. By the time our patients reach us, their problems are decades old. We cannot do much for them.”
Alice Brandfonbrener, MD, founder and director of the Performing Arts Medicine Association.
We do not simply focus on knowledge of music itself in our music program. In going beyond simple music instruction, we include sound knowledge of individual differences and vulnerability to risk of problems that can emanate from instructional practices. Not long ago, emotion and cognition were considered independent brain functions with cognition seen as more important than emotion. This view has drastically changed in the last decade with science now elucidating the close interaction between the two. As such, we look at basic and applied research in Childhood Psychology, Clinical Health Psychology, Learning and Motivation, and Cognitive Neuroscience. We know that knowledge can be drawn from these seemingly diverse dimensions to give us information about the interdependence of psychology and performing arts. The performing arts as a whole, has been resistant to utilization of the vast information from these diverse dimensions. We are not part of that resistance. We use a great deal of information from social, biological and neuro science, and it has taken us years to synthesize and put these seemingly diverse areas into practice.
Why Focus on Childhood Problems?
Mental and behavioral problems in childhood end up creating a large burden on society, simply because impairments learned in childhood can last a lifetime. In music instruction, the result of a few years of lessons is all too often, either an adult who had lessons and hated it and was profusely shamed by their experience, or someone who dropped prematurely due to the overwhelming negative experiences present during their instruction. A third scenario is someone who stayed in despite the lack of awareness in the arts about psychological problems, then later attempts to work out those problems without help from a professional. Even as we are seeing significant societal changes and opportunities with regards to helping children with emotional problems in the school system and in other venues, the performing arts as a discipline is reticent about utilizing these changes. Sport Psychology is 22 years ahead. Here, at the Attainment Center for Education, we do utilize them. That’s what makes us very different from others. Perhaps your child is in another piano program elsewhere; perhaps you are thinking of a friend or relative who is in lessons somewhere else. If that is true, it is nearly certain that the instructor is not taking advantage of the vast knowledge available from other disciplines to help children in their musical endeavors.
Performance Psychology for music instruction and performance is relatively new. It is an exciting and rapidly developing specialization that cuts across psychology and the performing arts. Music performance psychology offers scientists and clinicians a common opportunity to interact and to aid performing artists to further their personal and professional capabilities. For children in the arts, it offers a unique opportunity to learn their art within a framework optimal functioning. An example would be a beginning student learning how to accept negative parts of piano so as to stay in lessons longer. Some of Performing Arts Psychology's areas of interest include persistence and achievement, psychosocial issues in rehabilitation, counseling techniques with students and performers, practice adherence, self-perceptions related to learning and achieving, expertise, and performance enhancement and self-regulation techniques. Performing Arts Psychology brings together the clinical, scientific and musical aspects of participation in the arts.
Today, typical music instruction does not involve knowledge of learning, motivation, perception, child development--the basic 'things' that all other types of teachers are mandated by the state to know. Stated differently, musicians largely ignore psychology. Instead, some musicians have come up with their own ideas about learning, motivation, memory, etc. Even preschool teachers and daycare workers have state-mandated requirements with regards to child development, child psychology and the general well-being of the child. We now know that arts training can mediate significant changes in a child's brain. Currently, however, the arts has no oversight, no state or national licensing requirements. Music teachers even get by without even a background check. Teaching in the arts is decades behind all other modes of teaching.
True music psychology is like sport psychology; it is studying all the aspects of psychology that a psychologist knows, then applying that knowledge to sport. 20 years ago, sport psychology was in its infancy, like music psychology is now. At that time people thought that they either did not need psychology in sport, or they thought they already knew what they needed to know. Of course, neither viewpoint is correct, and we now take sport psychology for granted; it played a large part in optimal performance at this year's Olympics. However, if you have a child who plays soccer, baseball or any other sport, know that sport psychology is mandating certain guidelines with regards to working with the children. It now touches all aspects of sport.
***Cognitive perspective The perspective on psychology that stresses human thought and the processes of knowing, such as attending, thinking, remembering, expecting, solving problems, fantasizing, and consciousness.
