Effects of amateur piano education on the attention skills of 7-12 year old children (Sample of Bursa province)

While studying the effects of instrument education, as a dimension of art education; piano education is thought to be effective on attention skills due to the qualities of the instrument. In the study which is planned from this point of view; it is aimed to present the effect of private piano education on the attention skills of 7- 12 year old children. In accordance with the purpose of the study, sampling group is determined by purposive and homogeneous sampling methods and consists of 99 students from private schools which are administered by Ministery of National Education in Bursa province (experimental group n=46, control group n=53). The experimental group has taken piano education one hour a week for 14 weeks which is planned and given by the researcher. Before and after the education, Stroop Colour Word Test was given in order to measure the attention skills of all of the children in experimental and control groups. In the research; the experimental research model which is one of the quantitative research models is used through the help of SPSS 23.0 packaged software and 2x2 mixed ANOVA's using mixed factorial design for statistical analysis of the data. In this study that is made on healthy members, no neuropsychological evaluation scores were given but focused on the statistical discrepancy between the experimental and control groups. In the Stroop Colour Word Test which has four stages; 'Black and White Reading' stage determining the fundamental level of reading and data processing speed, two groups are seen to get shorter reading time and no significant difference has occured. In 'Name the Colour of Square Patches' part of the test, which is for controlling the basic level of data processing speed; responses of both of the groups were improved, however it was stated that the increase in the speed of the experimental group was significantly higher. In the 'Reading the Coloured Words' section which was a fundamental stimulus and proving the aliasing effect in the test, improvement in the responsing time of the children in the experimental group was significantly higher. In the 'Saying the colours of Coloured Words' section, which had the most aliasing effect in the test; although reading time of the experimental group was improved more than the control group, no significant difference was stated between the groups. Differences between the 3rd and 4th sections of the test give information about the general attention level and focusing skills. At this point of the study, differences between experimental and control groups were found, however this was not significantly important. Additionally, while there was not a significant difference in wrong answers between the groups, the improvement in the number of spontaneous recovery in the experimental group was statistically higher than the control group. Consequently, it was stated that reading time of the students who were given piano education were improved in all sections of the test; and although there was not a significant difference in some of the sections, attention skills of the experimental group were found to be better.