In recent years, the evidence has been growing: Music training seems to make kids smarter.
For instance, experiments on first graders suggest that a year of keyboard lessons can cause a modest increase in overall IQ. And last spring, I wrote about a study suggesting that childhood music lessons keep people cognitively sharp and flexible as they age.
Now we have more evidence: A new experiment showing that young children acquire more vocabulary and greater self-control after just 4 weeks of daily music lessons.
Sylvain Moreno of the Rotman Research Institute, who led the study, randomly assigned 48 children (ages 4 to 6) to participate in one of two computer-based educational enrichment programs.
For half the kids, the curriculum focused on the visual arts and the development of visual-spatial skills. Kids learned about concepts like shape, color, line, dimension, and perspective.
The other half took daily lessons with musical listening activities–lessons that included training in rhythm, pitch, melody, voice, and basic musical concepts.
The researchers were interested in the effects training might have on three key areas — vocabulary, spatial skills, and the something called “executive function,” the self-discipline that’s required to pay attention and resist impulses.
So they began the study by administering 3 tests to the kids:
• Vocabulary questions from the WPPSI-III, an intelligence test designed for young children
• Spatial intelligence tasks from the WPPSI-III, in which kids had to arrange some blocks in patterns specified by diagrams, and
• A “go /no-go” task, in which kids watched a series of shapes appear on a screen, and had to press a button whenever they saw a white shape. If they saw a purple shape, they were supposed to refrain from pressing the button. It’s a standard approach to measuring inhibition — the ability to control your impulses.
Then the kids started training. Each child attended two one-hour lessons each day for 5 days a week.
At the end of 4 weeks, the children were tested again. What happened?
The researchers had expected that the visual arts curriculum would boost visual spatial skills. It didn’t, maybe because 4 weeks was too brief a period for any effects to accumulate.
But the music curriculum was different. Kids who’d received the musical training showed improvement in their vocabulary scores.
More interesting (to me): They also improved their performance on the “go /no-go” task, suggesting that the music curriculum helped kids develop better self-control.
That’s important, because self-control or executive function is a crucial component of life-success. And in this study, researchers found that children’s improvements in executive function were related to changes in the brain:
The graduates of the music curriculum who improved their self-control showed a characteristic pattern of change in brain activity, as measured by the visual P2, an electrical signal that can be measured on the scalp.
Were these big improvements? No. They were modest. But when you consider the effects were detected after only 20 days of training, they’re pretty impressive.
And remember — the experimental design helps establish causation. It’s not just that privileged kids are more likely to get music training and develop better academic skills. This study helps rule out that explanation. Studies like this suggest that music training might make kids a little smarter.
Moreno and colleagues suspect it’s like exercising a muscle that performs several functions.
Executive control, verbal ability, and music depend on some of the same mechanisms and brain structures. So if musical training teaches kids to focus their attention and control their impulses, the resulting changes in the brain might improve executive function. And tasks that involve executive function (like learning new vocabulary) might become easier too.
Future research will test such possibilities. And, in personal correspondence, Moreno cautions that his music curriculum isn’t what we normally think of as music training. Unlike traditional music lessons, his program was specifically designed to stimulate brain areas linked with executive function. He doubts that regular music lessons would have the same effect.
But meanwhile, we have more reason to think that music is a valuable educational tool.
For an extended account of the evidence that music training helps kids, see my article “Music and intelligence.”
For talk about another approach to fostering self-discipline in kids, see this Momformation post.
And for an overview of the research on executive function in young children, see my article “Teaching self-control: Evidence-based tips.”
Reference: Moreno, S., Bialystok, E., Barac, R., Schellenberg, E. G., Cepeda, N. J., & Chau, T. 2011. Short-term music training enhances verbal intelligence and executive function. Psychological Science. Published online before print.
image ©iStockphoto.com/Kyu Oh