Lost in translation? Neuroscientific research, advocacy, and the claimed transfer benefits of musical practice

Abstract

In recent decades there has been a proliferation of neuromyths based on oversimplifications and over-generalisations of research findings. As part of a larger project that examines the societal impacts of the arts and arts education practices, this interdisciplinary collaborative study examines the translation of recent neuromusical research into the public domain, one of the main generators of neuromyths. We review the claimed benefits of musical engagement to other domains, and the ways that researchers discuss these claims. To accomplish this, we first provide a thematic analysis of the kinds of claims that are made in research texts. We analysed 76 review articles published between 2006 and 2016 that both concern brain imaging studies in humans and involve music. The analysis highlights the ways that researchers qualify the potential benefits of music. Second, we explore the ways that neuroscientists report their results to the public and the ways that these results are taken into public discourse. In order to do this we analysed the homepages of the researchers who published at least 2 review articles in our dataset, focussing on the media linked to their homepages. We also explored over 100 websites that mention the benefits of music and also refer to brain imaging research. These overviews allow us to show that the same criteria commonly applied in research are almost never applied in public discourse. We conclude that there is an ethical imperative for researchers to take care in presenting the research results of brain imaging studies to the larger public, and furthermore argue that there is an ethical obligation for researchers to speak out against misuse of research findings. ARTICLE HISTORY

Longitudinal Research on Music Education and Child Development: Contributions and Challenges

“…According to Philpott, these justifications "are predicated on the assumption that, at worst, music is seen as servicing other areas of human understanding, and at best as a necessary counterpart to a 'harder' and more rational world" (p. 49). Although not always explicit, in many of the reviewed research reports, an underlying assumption was that music learning is eminently good for children, and thus produces "good effects" (for a discussion see Odendaal et al, 2018;Philpott, 2009). Philpott's perspective illustrates how an emphasis on far transfer can sometimes be met with suspicion by scholars in music education (see also Rauscher, 1998).…”

Auditory and visual category learning in musicians and nonmusicians.

“…The extent and specificity of the benefits of music training are highly debated. While some have argued that music training may confer domain-general benefits including enhanced IQ (Schellenberg, 2004(Schellenberg, , 2006, verbal intelligence (Bialystok & DePape, 2009;Moreno et al, 2011), inhibitory control (Bialystok & DePape, 2009), verbal memory (Chan et al, 1998), and working memory (George & Coch, 2011;Moreno et al, 2011;Weiss et al, 2014), others have argued that benefits are limited to the auditory modality (Odendaal et al, 2019;Schellenberg, 2008Schellenberg, , 2016Schellenberg & Peretz, 2008;Stoesz et al, 2007;Tierney et al, , 2009. To better understand whether musicians have domain-general or auditory-specific benefits, we examine auditory and visual category learning with tasks that have distinct cognitive demands.…”

6. Challenges

“…Cobo Dorado (2015) and Henley (2018) suggest that in the field of music education, it is pedagogy rather than music that potentially-though not necessarilygenerates desirable social effects. Odendaal et al (2019) argue that the findings of neuroscientific studies of music's impact are often exaggerated in their "translation" to mainstream and social media, while Sala and Gobet (2020) roundly refute the dominant argument about the cognitive effects of music education.…”

“…As Sala and Gobet (2020) note, the two major RCTs above have been paid little attention by the media or even by other researchers, even though RCT is the gold-standard methodology. More positive studies are more likely to be picked up by advocacy organizations and to lead to a report in the media, in which small-scale and specific findings often become an expansive and generalized story about the power of music (Mehr 2015;Odendaal et al 2019). Many musicians encounter headlines, summaries, and animations of such stories on social media.…”