[?

]Subscribe To
This Site
Home
Welcome
Search
Bookshop
Odds and Ends
What's new
Babies
Overview & index
Breastfeeding
Crying
Baby sleep
Solids
Behavior
Bullying
Self-control
Social skills
Brains
Education
Intelligence
Music
School
Science
Emotions
Empathy
Food
Overview & index
Parenting
Attachment
Parenting styles
Praise
Preschoolers
Preschool math
Preschool science
Social skills
Sleep
Overview & index
Stress
Stress
Toilet training
and troubles
Toilet training
Toys and Games
Toys
Video games
Participate
Surveys
About...
Gwen Dewar
Contact info
Links
Music and intelligence: A guide for the
science-minded
2008-2013 Gwen Dewar, Ph.D., all
rights reserved
Is there is link between music and intelligence?
Yes, there is.
Forget the Mozart effect. The real action seems to occur when
children learn to play musical instruments.
Music and intelligence: The effects of passive
listening
The Mozart effect doesnt cause lasting improvements in IQ
Everybodys heard of the Mozart effect-the notion that you can increase
your intelligence by listening to Mozarts music.
Experiments have reported that people enjoyed brief improvements in their
visual-spatial skills immediately after listening to a Mozart sonata (Rauscher
et al 1993; Hetland 2000).
However, the results have been inconsistent, with some labs failing replicate
the effect. It's also unclear if it was really the music that was responsible for
the temporary enhancement of intelligence.
It's plausible that
people improved
their performance
because listening to
music elevated their
mood and left them
feeling more alert
(Schellenberg 2005).
And whatever the
cause, it seems
unlikely that passive
listening can make
you smarter in the
long-term.
Google advertisements
In the experiments cited above, the effect did not appear to last more than
10-15 minutes.
So if youre looking for a way to boost your childs intelligence, the Mozart
effect is a bust.
Music might help prime people for concentrating on spatial tasks, and there
is evidence that kids who listen to music while they draw produce more
creative artwork.
But thats about it.
Taking music lessons, though...thats another matter entirely. Research
indicates that music lessons change the course of brain development. And
there is evidence that musical training can have a small, beneficial effect on
non-musical intellectual performance.
Music and intelligence:
How musical training shapes the brain
Brain scanning technologies have permitted
neuroscientists to test ideas about the link between music
and intelligence. And the results are clear:
Musicians have distinctively different brains.
Their brains react differently to sound. For instance, in one
study, people who played musical instruments as children
showed more robust brainstem responses to sound than
did non-musicians (Skoe and Kraus 2012).
Praise for Parenting
Science
"[A] welcome antidote to the
opinion dressed up as science that
parents are constantly fed. Tear
up your parenting books and get
yourselves over there..."
- Charles Fernyhough, Ph.D.,
developmental psychologist and
author of A Thousand Days of
Wonder: A Scientists Chronicle of
his Daughters Developing Mind
"...[O]ne of the most awesome
websites Ive seen in a long time
In addition to being helpful to
academic parents, I see this site
being useful in anthropology
courses on human sexuality, life
history, parenting, evolutionary
medicine, evolutionary
psychology, etc. Please check it
out!"
- Julienne Rutherford, Ph.D.,
University of Illinois biological
anthropologist and founder of the
Biological Anthropology
Developing Investigators Troop
(BANDIT)
"I came across a great website run
by Gwen Dewar, one I wish it had
been available to me when my
children were young. I hope
everyone interested in math and
kids will look at In search of the
Page 1 of 6 Music and intelligence
2/21/2014 http://www.parentingscience.com/music-and-intelligence.html
Other studies have reported that kids assigned to receive musical training
developed distinctive neural responses to music and speech -- evidence of
more intense information processing that was linked with improvements in
the discrimination of pitch and the segmentation of speech (Moreno et al
2009; Chobert et al 2012; Franois et al 2012).
But it's not just a matter of differences in brain activity. There are also
differences in brain volume.
If you examine the brain of a keyboard player, youll find that the region of
the brain that controls finger movements is enlarged (Pascual-Leone 2001).
Moreover, brain scans of 9- to 11-year old children have revealed that those
kids who play musical instruments have significantly more grey matter
volume in both the sensorimotor cortex and the occipital lobes (Schlaug et
al 2005).
In fact, musicians have significantly more grey matter in several brain
regions (Schlaug et al 2005), and the effects of music lessons seem to
increase with the intensity of training.
One study compared professional keyboard players with amateurs. Although
both groups had music training, the professionals practiced twice as much.
The professionals also had significantly more grey matter volume in a
number of brain regions (Gaser and Schlaug 2003).
In the genes?
It's not simply a case of genetics-i.e., that people with more grey matter
volume are more likely to become musicians. Research suggests that the
brains of non-musicians change in response to musical training.
In one study, non-musicians were assigned to perform a 5-finger exercise
on the piano for two hours a day. Within five days, subjects showed
evidence of re-wiring. The size of the area associated with finger
movements had become larger and more active (Pascual-Leone 2001)
So it's reasonable to think that the brain grows in response to music
training. Does these brain differences reflect differences in intelligence?
Maybe so.
In the study of 9 to 11-year olds, musicians performed better on several
tests than did their non-musical peers. They scored significantly higher on
tests of vocabulary and finger tapping. They also exhibited a strong, but
statistically non-significant, trend towards better spatial and math skills
(Schlaug et al 2005).
And other studies reveal a variety of notable--and statistically significant--
differences in test scores between musicians and non-musicians.
Music and intelligence:
Musicians perform better on cognitive tasks
People with music training often outperform their non-musical peers on
cognitive tasks (Schellenberg 2006).
For instance, a study of 4 to 6-year olds found that musically-trained kids
performed better on a test of working memory (Fujioka et al 2006).
Other research (Schellenberg 2006; Patel and Iverson 2007) indicates that
musicians perform significantly better on tests of
Spatial-temporal skills
Math ability
Reading skills
Vocabulary
Verbal memory
Phonemic awareness
Musically-trained people also perform better on general intelligence
tests.
In a cross-sectional study of Canadian school children, E. Glenn
Schellenberg (2006) found that kids who took music lessons had slightly
higher IQs. The effects were general, cutting across several different
intellectual abilities (e.g., verbal, mathematical, and temporal-spatial).
Music lessons were associated with abilities associated with fluid
intelligence, such as
Working memory
Perceptual organization
smart preschool board game and
other pages on this site."
- Bill Marsh, Ph.D., in mathematics
and author of MathInking, a blog
about teaching math
"Gwen Dewar, a Ph.D. in biological
anthropology, analyzes the latest
research about parenting and kids.
Check it out. You might even learn
something about evolutionary
psychology, or brain chemistry, or
stereotyping."
- Polly Palumbo, Ph.D.,
psychologist and author of the
blog, Momma Data: Childrens
Healthy in the Media
Page 2 of 6 Music and intelligence
2/21/2014 http://www.parentingscience.com/music-and-intelligence.html
Processing speed
They were also associated with increased verbal comprehension and better
high school grades.
These differences remained significant after controlling for a childs
age, nonmusical activities, family income, and parents education.
Finally, a new study of older adults--aged 65-80--found a correlation
between childhood music training and cognitive performance. The more
years a person had spent playing an instrument, the better he performed on
tests of word recall, visual (nonverbal) memory, and cognitive flexibility
(Hanna-Pladdy and Mackay 2011).
Why might music lessons enhance
intelligence?
Musicians tend to be smarter than average, which suggests the possibility
that music training enhances intelligence. How would that work?
E. Glenn Schellenberg and other researchers offer several possibilities
(Schellenberg 2005; Shlaug et al 2005). Maybe music training boosts non-
musical intellectual performance by honing skills of general importance.
For instance, students of music are required to
focus attention for long periods of time
decode a complex symbolic system (musical notation)
translate the code into precise motor patterns
recognize patterns of sound across time
discriminate differences in pitch
learn rules of pattern formation
memorize long passages of music
track and reproduce rhythms
understand ratios and fractions (e.g., a quarter note is half as long as a
half note)
improvise within a set of musical rules
If children improve these skills, they might find their improvements transfer
to other domains, like language and mathematics.
But there is also the killjoy hypothesis--the idea that music
lessons are the effect, not the cause, of higher IQs.
Music and intelligence: Is the link
driven merely by prior ability?
Whether or not music lessons enhance intelligence, one thing seems a sure
bet. Part of link between music training and intelligence can be explained by
the prior abilities of the musician.
Maybe parents with higher IQs are more likely to enroll their kids in music
lessons. Or maybe kids with higher IQs are more likely to seek out and stick
with music lessons because they find music training more rewarding
(Schellenberg 2006). Either way, this could explain the correlation between
music training and IQ.
So the crucial question is this: How can we rule out the idea that the link
between music and intelligence is entirely determined by prior ability?
What's needed are controlled experiments, randomly assigning kids with no
prior music training to receive lessons.
Several studies have pursued this approach, and the results support the
idea that music training contributes to cognitive enhancements.
Page 3 of 6 Music and intelligence
2/21/2014 http://www.parentingscience.com/music-and-intelligence.html
Evidence that music training is the
causenot merely the effectof higher
IQ
One study randomly assigned 4-year olds to receive either weekly keyboard
lessons or a control condition for 6-8 months. The kids who received music
training performed better on a test of spatial skills (Rauscher et al 1997).
These results were replicated by other research (Rauscher 2002).
Another experimental study randomly assigned 6-year-olds to receive one
of four treatments during the school year:
Keyboard lessons
Vocal lessons
Drama lessons
No lessons
By the end of the school year, all participants experienced a small increase
in IQ. However, the kids who received music lessons showed significantly
more improvement than the other groups did (Schellenberg 2004).
These results support the idea that musical training causes a modest
improvement in IQ. But, as E. Glenn Schellenberg points out, we dont know
long the effect will last and at least one music training experiment has failed
to find a link between music and intelligence (Costa-Giomi 1999;
Schellenberg 2006).
One problem, says Schellenberg, is that a lot of people drop out of these
experiments before they are completed. More long-term studies should help
clear thing up.
One such study is being conducted by Gottfried Schlaug and his colleagues
at the Music and Neuroimaging Laboratory at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical
Center and Harvard Medical School.
These researchers are tracking the effects of music lessons--specifically,
piano and violin lessons--on brain development and cognition.
Fifty kids, aged 5 to 7 years, began the study with no prior music training.
Before starting music lessons, these kids were given brain scans and
cognitive tests to establish baselines. Researchers are also following a
control group, matched for age, socioeconomic status and verbal IQ.
Fifteen months into the study, the musically-trained kids showed greater
improvement in finger motor skills and auditory discrimination skills.
Although there were no other behavioral differences between groups, the
musicians also showed structural brain differences in
regions linked with motor and auditory processing, and
"various frontal areas, the left posterior peri-cingulate and a left middle
occipital region" (Hyde et al 2009)
The trained kids were expected to show differences in motor and auditory
processing centers. The other changes were unexpected, but may relate to
the brain's need to integrate information from various modalities (visual,
motor, auditory, et cetera).
Schlaug and colleagues will to track these kids for many years. For more
information about their continuing research on music and intelligence, check
out their website.
And click hereto read about an experimental study that suggests 20 days of
music training -- when combined with training for better executive function
-- can enhance a child's self-control and verbal intelligence (Moreno et al
2011).
Music and intelligence: The bottom line
Nobody rules out the idea that genes may be responsible for much of the IQ
advantage enjoyed by musicians. But researchers strongly suspect that
music training is responsible for some of the effect. In the next few years,
we may have definitive evidence on this point.
Meanwhile? I think there's good reason to offer music lessons to children in
primary school. Cognitive benefits aside, we shouldnt overlook the obvious:
Music lessons are intrinsically rewarding. When kids learn to play a musical
instrument, they are laying the groundwork for a lifetimes appreciation of
music.
Page 4 of 6 Music and intelligence
2/21/2014 http://www.parentingscience.com/music-and-intelligence.html
Google advertisements
Resources
You can help fuel your child's interest by sharing the world's best music with
him. I've found a website, Classic Cat, where you can do this for free.
It's a catalog of over 4800 classical performances (many of them complete)
that can be downloaded free and legally.
Best of all, the site is indexed by composer, performer, genres, and even
instruments. So if your child wants to know what an oboe sounds like, you
can quickly find and download Mozart's Quartet and Oboe for Strings in F
major.
References: Music and intelligence
Chobert J, Franois C, Velay JL, and Besson M. 2012. Twelve Months of
Active Musical Training in 8- to 10-Year-Old Children Enhances the
Preattentive Processing of Syllabic Duration and Voice Onset Time. Cereb
Cortex. 2012 Dec 12. [Epub ahead of print]
Costa-Giomi E. 1999. The effects of three years of piano instruction on
childrens cognitive development. Journal of research in music education 47:
198-212.
Franois C, Chobert J, Besson M, and Schn D. 2012. Music Training for the
Development of Speech Segmentation. Cereb Cortex. 2012 Jul 10. [Epub
ahead of print]
Fujioka T, Ross B, Kakigi R, Pantev C, and Trainor LJ. 2006. One year of
musical training affects development of auditory cortical-evoked fields in
young children. Brain. 129(Pt 10):2593-608
Gaser C and Schlaug G. 2003. Brain structures differ between musicians
and nonmusicians. Journal of Neuroscience 23: 9240-9245.
Hanna-Pladdy B, Mackay A. 2011. The relation between instrumental
musical activity and cognitive aging. Neuropsychology. 2011 Apr 4. [Epub
ahead of print]
Hetland L. 2000. Listening to music enhances spatial-temporal reasoning:
Evidence for the "Mozart effect." The Journal of Aesthetic Education, 34
(3/4): 105--148.
Hyde KL, Lerch J, Norton A, Forgeard M, Winner E, Evans AC, Schlaug G.
2009. The effects of musical training on structural brain development: a
longitudinal study. Ann N Y Acad Sci. 1169:182-6.
Moreno S, Marques C, Santos A, Santos M, Castro SL, and Besson M. 2009.
Musical training influences linguistic abilities in 8-year-old children: more
evidence for brain plasticity. Cereb Cortex. 19(3):712-23.
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. Epub 2011 Oct 3.
Pascual-Leone A. 2001. The Brain That Plays Music and Is Changed by It.
Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 930 (1): 315329.
Patel AD and Iversen JR. 2007. The linguistic benefits of musical abilities.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 11:369-372.
Rauscher FH, Shaw GL and Ky, KN. 1993. Music and spatial task
performance. Nature 365: 611.
Rauscher FH, Shaw GL, Levine, LJ, Wright EL, Dennis WR, and Newcomb RL.
1997. Music training causes long-term enhancements of preschool childrens
spatial-temporal reasoning. Neurological Research 19: 2-8.
Page 5 of 6 Music and intelligence
2/21/2014 http://www.parentingscience.com/music-and-intelligence.html
Rauscher FH. 2002. Mozart and the mind: Factual and fictional effects of
musical enrichment. In J Aronson (ed), Improving academic achievement:
Impact of psychological factors in education, pp. 267-278. San Diego:
Academic Press.
Schellenberg EG. 2004. Music lessons enhance IQ. Psychological Science 15
(8) 511-514.
Schellenberg EG. 2005. Long-term positive associations between music
lessons and IQ. Journal of Educational Psychology 98(2): 457-468.
Schellenberg EG. 2006. Long-term positive associations between music
lessons and IQ. Journal of Educational Psychology 98(2): 457-468.
Schellenberg EG. 2011. Examining the association between music lessons
and intelligence. Br J Psychol. 102(3):283-302.
Schlaug G, Norton A, Overy K and Winner E. 2005. Effects of music training
on the childs brain and cognitive development. Ann. N.Y. Acad. Sci. 1060:
219-230.
Skoe E and Kraus N. 2012. A little goes a long way: how the adult brain is
shaped by musical training in childhood. J Neurosci. 32(34):11507-10.
Content last modified 5/13
Share this page:
Copyright 2006-2014 by Gwen Dewar, Ph.D.; all rights reserved.
For educational purposes only. If you suspect you have a medical problem, please
see a physician.
SBI!
Page 6 of 6 Music and intelligence
2/21/2014 http://www.parentingscience.com/music-and-intelligence.html