Abstract
We investigated if group music training in childhood is associated with prosocial skills. Children in 3rd or 4th grade who attended 10 months of music lessons taught in groups were compared to a control group of children matched for socio-economic status. All children were administered tests of prosocial skills near the beginning and end of the 10-month period. Compared to the control group, children in the music group had larger increases in sympathy and prosocial behavior, but this effect was limited to children who had poor prosocial skills before the lessons began. The effect was evident even when the lessons were compulsory, which minimized the role of self-selection. The results suggest that group music training facilitates the development of prosocial skills.
Highlights
Throughout history, some form of music has been evident in all human cultures [1,2,3]
Vocabulary had a positive association with emotion comprehension, and sympathy was correlated positively with prosocial skills and emotion comprehension
Unlike most developmental studies of associations between music training and nonmusical abilities, selfselection played a minimal role because the group lessons were compulsory for most children, and the findings did not change when children who voluntarily took the lessons were excluded from the analyses
Summary
Throughout history, some form of music has been evident in all human cultures [1,2,3]. Infants in the active condition showed larger increases on parent-report measures of positive affect (smiling and laughing) and soothability, and larger decreases on measures of distress and wariness of novelty All of these studies lacked ecological validity, in the sense that they were conducted in the laboratory [29], they involved nonstandardized programs that were designed to improve social skills [28], or they involved children who were much too young for typical instrumental or vocal music lessons [30]. In other words, it is unclear whether the findings would generalize to school-age children’s experiences with music in everyday life. Because intervention programs can have the greatest success among children who need them the most [36,37], we expected that group music making would be most beneficial for children who began the program with poor social skills
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