The purpose of this study was to examine the interaction between substance use messages in music media and how it impacts perception of substance and current substance use for different ethnicities. Four hundred and eighty four participants were recruited from a large southeastern university. Participant ethnicities included Caucasian, Hispanic, African American and Asian. This study examined frequency of substance use messages in popular music lyrics and music videos, along with participant self-reported ethnicity and, rates of substance use and perceived risk from substance use. Differences in perception of risk and current substance use were indicated between Caucasian and African American participants. Interestingly, an inverse relationship between exposure to substance use messages and perception of risk of harm from substance use was noted, with more frequent exposure being correlated with greater perceived risk and lower current substance use. Regression analysis indicated that ethnicity predicted frequency of substance use messages in music media, and exposure to substance use messaged predicted both perception of risk of harm from substance use and current substance use, supporting the hypothesized role of music as a mediator between ethnicity and substance use.

The primary aim of this study is to investigate the effects of short term Interpersonal Cognitive Problem Solving (ICPS) training with pre-school children compared to an alternative treatment of Music Therapy (MT). The MT treatment served to investigate the relationship between creativity and Alternative Solutions Thinking (AST). No treatment control was included in the design (Study 1). Seven-month follow-up measures of effects from the treatments are included (Study IT), to determine the stability of therapeutic gains. The results reveal a successful elevation of AST and Consequential Thinking (CT) following ICPS training, stable over at least seven months and a sleeper effect from the MT treatment. Behavioural observation revealed improved social interactive behaviours following treatment, but there is some indication that behavioural gains may not be stable. The influence of music on AST and CT was further examined in Study III by comparing AST and CT fluency of children who attended a musically enriched pre-school to that of the children who received short term MT treatment and a non-treatment Control group. The children in Study III proved significantly better at AST and CT than the children in the previous studies were. Finally, in Study IV, an alternative mode of mediating ICPS skills was attempted. This involved a short training of pre-school staff to apply ICPS training techniques in daily dealings with the children. Girls benefited more from this treatment, and only CT skills were elevated. Results are related to previous findings in ICPS research and discussed in terms of developmental theories, especially Vygotsky’s conception of thought development and Crick and Dodge’s (1994) social information processing model. A developmental relationship between AST and CT is suggested and it is argued that AST may be a form of creative thought. Implications of the results for education and therapy are discussed

This interdisciplinary thesis explores how music is used in the art of healing in two distinct ways in the early modern period: namely, through the use of performed music accompanying the healing process itself, and as ‘speculative music', the latter providing a philosophical model for understanding the interplay of music with body, mind and soul. Redefining an existing enquiry in a specific way, my research seeks to enhance an understanding of the construction of a therapeutic modality that revitalizes the ancient belief in the healing powers of music, manifest since antiquity through the classical legends of Orpheus and Pythagoras. The Pythagorean hypothesis – that earthly music reflected the celestial harmony of the spheres – was believed to govern the internal music of the human body, giving credence to the notion of the harmonious balancing of the four bodily humours. Tracing the tradition of healing music from antiquity, I argue that Marsilio Ficino's paradigmatic magico-musical philosophy refashions the Pythagorean and Neoplatonic explanations of music's curative potentiality, offering a new interpretat ion of music's effective power to heal the rift between body and soul. I examine how this Ficinian interpretation is discernible in the work of Robert Fludd, Michael Maier, William Shakespeare, Robert Burton and Thomas Campion. I analyse their observations of the body's physical and emotional response to music's healing power. Drawing on early modern models that appropriate the rhetoric of the music of the spheres, I argue that a cultural moment is established in which the motifs and tropes of Neoplatonic love and the healing power of music culminate in allegories of philosophical contemplation and spiritual fulfilment in the Jacobean court masques. In conclusion, my thesis's examination of music as a healing modality provides a historical framework to support the contemporary use of music as a recognized therapeutic intervention.

This thesis considers ordinary Swedish teenagers and their everyday use of,and views on, music. The aim of the study is to analyse the relationship between identity and adolescents’ use of music in their daily lives. Theories are employed that hold identity to be a process, and that comprise the social as well as the psychological aspects of the individual (Giddens,1991; 1997; Jenkins, 2008). Since for both Giddens and Jenkins the reflexive identity process takes place in everyday life, it is a concept that is essential to this study. The idea that people are active, not passive, in their day-to-day use of cultural products ultimately leads to Small’s (1998) definition of musicking. The empirical part of the study was carried out among fifteen eighthgraders (14–15 years) in two schools in two Swedish cities. An initial questionnaire provided outlines of the adolescents’ musical preferences, and were followed by focus group conversations centred on six music examples. Later, interviews were carried out to chart the informants’ individual relationships with music and their personal use of it. The material is analysed thematically in three chapters on music and ‘them’, music and ‘us’, and music and ‘me’. In the final chapter, a competent musicking agency is held to be a combinationof individual and social factors. Whether these aspects can coexist boils down to the question of authenticity: much like Giddens’s competent agent, the competent musicking agent moves between life sectors, maintaining balance between uniqueness and normality, and is therefore perceived as authentic by both herself and others. In school, pupils tend to choose music that promotes their public image. Instead of yielding to a tussle between self-image and public image, it is suggested that music education should become a free zone where the well known is looked at in newways, and where one could get to know the unknown.