Elvis Has Left the Building: Correlational but Not Causal Relationship between Music Skill and Cognitive Ability

Abstract

Music training is commonly thought to have a positive impact on children's cognitive skills and academic achievement. This belief relies on the idea that engaging in an intellectually demanding activity helps to foster overall cognitive function. We here present a meta-analysis of music-intervention studies in children (N = 3,780, k = 204, m = 43). Consistent with the substantial findings in the field of cognitive training, the overall effect size was small ( ̅ = 0.117, p < .001). Moreover, when active controls were implemented, the effect was practically null ( ̅ = 0.032, p = .477) and highly homogeneous (ω 2 = 0.000 and τ 2 = 0.000). Finally, we observe that several independent research groups have concluded, via different methodologies, that music skills acquired by training do not generalize to nonmusic skills. Thorndike and Woodworth's (1901) common elements theory finds thus further support.

Near and far transfer: Is music special?

“…As a main outcome, the authors stated that "researchers' optimism about the benefits of music training is empirically unjustified and stems from misinterpretation of the empirical data and, possibly, confirmation bias" (Sala & Gobet, 2020, page 1429. This finding is consistent with their previous conclusions, summarized as "Music is over" (Sala & Gobet, 2017b) and "Elvis has left the building" (Sala & Gobet, 2019b). For the authors, "the obvious practical implication is that music training should not be used as a tool for cognitive enhancement" (Sala & Gobet, 2019b, page 991) and "Educators and policymakers should be aware that music training provides no benefits on non-music-related cognitive or academic skills" (ibid.).…”

“…This same pool of studies (minus two studies) was reanalyzed in a second-order meta-analysis (Sala et al, 2019). The majority of these studies (i.e., 30) was then combined with 13 more recent studies in Sala and Gobet (2019b), leading to 43 studies, 204 effects size and 3,780 participants. Finally, a selection of these studies was combined with eleven new studies in a multilevel meta-analysis, including 54 studies, 254 effect sizes and 6,984 participants, which will be the focus of our present paper (Sala & Gobet, 2020).…”

“…Another recent meta-analysis (Cooper, 2020) was run with 21 studies and 100 effect sizes (numerous had been also included in Sala & Gobet, 2017b. In contrast to Sala and Gobet (2017b, 2019b), Cooper's (2020) meta-analysis reported a moderate overall effect of musical training for both active and non-active control group studies, but this effect failed to be significant for studies done in a laboratory setting with an active control group.…”

“…This process consisted in a two-step sensitivity analysis, with the second step applying the influential case analysis only to the non-active control group studies, selecting only five influential cases (out of nine) and changing the implementation of the moderator analysis. Interestingly, randomization was not a significant moderator in their previous meta-analysis (Sala & Gobet, 2019b), which used a simpler, one-step process: an influential case analysis was run on all studies of the main analysis. We applied this analysis strategy to the present data file (i.e., the full data set as used in the main analysis).…”

“…As in Sala and Gobet (2019b), we then ran the influential case analysis on all effect sizes (that is, for both active and non-active control group studies). When the seven effect sizes that were identified as increasing heterogeneity (i.e., six were positive effect sizes) were removed, the outcome of this meta-analysis confirmed the outcome of our previous one, but with reduced heterogeneity (Table 3 right).…”