Music training and child development: a review of recent findings from a longitudinal study

Abstract

Evidence suggests that learning to play music enhances musical processing skills and benefits other cognitive abilities. Furthermore, studies of children and adults indicate that the brains of musicians and nonmusicians are different. It has not been determined, however, whether such differences result from pre-existing traits, musical training, or an interaction between the two. As part of an ongoing longitudinal study, we investigated the effects of music training on children's brain and cognitive development. The target group of children was compared with two groups of children, one involved in sports and another not enrolled in any systematic afterschool training. Two years after training, we observed that children in the music group had better performance than comparison groups in musically relevant auditory skills and showed related brain changes. For nonmusical skills, children with music training, compared with children without music or with sports training, showed stronger neural activation during a cognitive inhibition task in regions involved in response inhibition despite no differences in performance on behavioral measures of executive function. No such differences were found between music and sports groups. We conclude that music training induces brain and behavioral changes in children, and those changes are not attributable to pre-existing biological traits.

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

“…The present study intends to update Sala and Gobet's (2017b) meta-analysis and test the recent claims about the presumed cognitive and academic benefits of music training (e.g., Habibi et al, 2018). To achieve this goal, we (a) extend the literature research to the last three years (from January the 1 st 2016 to December the 31 st 2018), (b) apply a more advanced modeling approach, and (c) provide stricter inclusion criteria to improve, compared to Sala and Gobet (2017b), the average quality of the studies included in the meta-analytic review.…”

Musical and verbal short‐term memory: insights from neurodevelopmental and neurological disorders

“…). Improvements due to musical training can be observed for a variety of perceptual and cognitive tasks, including speech‐in‐noise perception, auditory selective attention, and executive functions …”

“…Improvements due to musical training can be observed for a variety of perceptual and cognitive tasks, including speech-in-noise perception, 31 auditory selective attention, 32 and executive functions. 33 A meta-analysis of studies comparing STM and WM (as well as LTM) in musicians and nonmusicians was recently performed. 34 It confirmed that musicians perform better than nonmusicians in memory tasks.…”

Promises of Music in Education?

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