As society continues to develop and the demand for talent continues to rise, children's music education is taking on a progressively larger share of society. This paper is composed of two parts: bibliometric and theoretical analysis. A cluster analysis of keywords was conducted on 2000 articles on the topic of "music education for children's intellectual development". The results show that the main focus of previous research in the field of "music education for children's intellectual development" has been on children's academic achievement, perception and physical qualities. Less research has been conducted on children's attention, memory, and observation. Secondly, this paper analyses the effects of music education on children's attention, memory and observation from five specific perspectives through theoretical analysis. The results show that music education significantly improves children's attention, memory and observation skills, thus promoting their intellectual development.