Music and Dance Training are not Uniquely Associated with Memory Skills

Abstract

Music training is robustly associated with cognitive skills, and with tonal and verbal memory more specifically. However, it is unclear whether these associations reflect near or far transfer and/or whether they indicate pre-existing differences between those who do or do not take music lessons for long durations. Dance training may similarly rely on or train visuospatial memory abilities and produce exercise-induced benefits for working memory, but there is far less research on its associations with cognition. In Study 1, women with varying durations of formal music and dance experience completed measures of visual and auditory memory, general intelligence, demographics, and personality. Music training was associated with auditory immediate and delayed memory, as well as visual working memory, but all associations disappeared when other variables were held constant. Furthermore, dance training was not associated with any memory measure. Study 2 was similar but focused on visual memory and included both men and women. We replicated the simple association between duration of music training and visual working memory, which once again ceased to remain significant when controlling for other variables. Similarly, dance training failed to correlate with any visual memory measure despite the use of more valid visual memory tasks. Our findings suggest that memory advantages among musicians most likely result from pre-existing differences rather than near transfer and provide no evidence of transfer from dance training to visual memory.