Learning to Make Music Enhances Spatial Reasoning

Abstract

Does active instruction in music enhance preschool and elementary students' performance on spatial tasks? Researchers have been interested in this question not only because of the importance of spatial abilities, which underlie professions such as engineering, archaeology, and surgery, but also because spatial abilities are thought to be important in the discipline of mathematics.' This meta-analytic review synthesizes the results of 15 independent studies that address this controversial and highly publicized question. While the studies summarized here address a question distinct from the Mozart effect studies,2 scholars and the public have often failed to distinguish these two bodies of research (one on the spatial effects of passive music listening, the other on the spatial effects of active participation in music instruction). Yet whether college students' performance on spatial tasks is temporarily improved following brief exposure to classical music tells us almost nothing about whether preschool and elementary children perform better on spatial tests following a program of active music instruction. These instruction studies deserve separate summary so that we can understand their meaning and determine their implications for future research and classroom practice. Several previous reviews have assessed music's impact on nonmusical abilities, but none has directly addressed the question posed by this review. Five of these reviews are loosely related to the present summary in focus and/or method. A narrative review by Wolff assessed nonmusical outcomes of music education and critiqued study methods, including several studies with spatial outcomes.3 Tunks's chapter in The Handbook of Research on Music Teaching and Learning defined and summarized the concept of transfer in relation to the field of music education.4 The only meta-analysis on extramusical effects of music education was published in 1996 by Standley, but it does not include spatial outcomes. Instead, it examines the effects of music used as a reinforcement for various educational and thera-