The impact of a music education program on meta-musical awareness, logical-mathematical, and notational skills in preschoolers

Abstract

A number of studies suggest a link between musical training and both specific and general cognitive abilities, but despite some positive results, there is disagreement about which abilities are improved. This study aims to investigate the effects of a music education program both on a domain-specific competence (meta-musical awareness), and on general domain competences, that is, cognitive abilities (logical-mathematical) and symbolic-linguistic abilities (notational). Twenty 4- to 6-year-old children participated in the research, divided into two groups (experimental and control) and the measures were administered at two different times, before and after a 6-month music program (for the experimental group) and after a sports training program (for the control group). Children performed meta-musical awareness tasks, logical-mathematical tasks, and emergent-alphabetization tasks. Non-parametric statistics show that a music program significantly improves the development of notational skills and meta-musical awareness while not the development of logical-mathematical skills. These results show that a musical program increases children’s meta-musical awareness, and their ability to acquire the notational ability involved in the invented writing of words and numbers. On the contrary, it does not affect the development of logical skills. The results are discussed in terms of transfer of knowledge processes and of specific versus general domain effects of a musical program.

Evaluation of the Early Childhood Music Education project’s influence on the development of 3- to 5-year-old children in Andalusia, Spain

“…Despite studies inquiring into far transfer in music becoming increasingly more frequent (Biasutti & Concina, 2013;Jaschke et al, 2013;Hallam, 2015;Incognito et al, 2021), due to methodological limitations and research designs, the concept has not been free from criticism (Mehr et al, 2013;Benz et al, 2016;Swaminathan & Schellenberg, 2016;Dumont et al, 2017;Sala & Gobet, 2017). Randomised controlled trials (RCTs), longitudinal studies and studies with active control groups may help to clarify a far transfer causal relationship, but due to high costs and intrusive intervention, they are still hard to perform.…”

Correlation Analysis of Higher Education Music Teaching Quality and Students’ Artistic Literacy - Based on Regression Analysis Model

“…The music discipline has an important position in the context of quality education, and cultivating students' artistic literacy is the core task of music teaching [16]. In high school music teaching, the development of students' musical literacy has practical significance, mainly reflected in the enhancement of students' musical aesthetic ability, the development of students' musical skills, and the broadening of students' artistic vision [17][18].…”

Effective Application of Multiple Intelligences Theory in Music Education

“…Music has a special emotional infectivity, its charm enduring, not only can cultivate sentiment and adjust the mood, but also improve cognitive ability and aesthetic ability; music education is different from other disciplines to emphasize the knowledge of the explanation and skills transfer, which focuses more on the students to feel the emotional outburst and the cultivation of the humanistic spirit [1][2]. Therefore, teachers should use innovative educational methods to break the shackles of examoriented education so that students can obtain the core literacy of music education [3].…”

“…Meiying Ni, Fangling Yang and Mei Liu. Applied Mathematics and Nonlinear Sciences, 9(1) (2024)[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13] …”