Abstract
Music training has been recently claimed to enhance children and young adolescents' cognitive and academic skills. However, substantive research on transfer of skills suggests that far-transfer - i.e., the transfer of skills between two areas only loosely related to each other - occurs rarely. In this meta-analysis, we examined the available experimental evidence regarding the impact of music training on children and young adolescents' cognitive and academic skills. The results of the random-effects models showed (a) a small overall effect size (d¯=0.16); (b) slightly greater effect sizes with regard to intelligence (d¯=0.35) and memory-related outcomes (d¯=0.34); and (c) an inverse relation between the size of the effects and the methodological quality of the study design. These results suggest that music training does not reliably enhance children and young adolescents' cognitive or academic skills, and that previous positive findings were probably due to confounding variables.
Highlights
The question of whether music-related activities in school improve young people's cognitive and academic skills has raised much interest among researchers, educators, and policy makers
Along with a small overall effect size (d 1⁄4 0.16, CI [0.09; 0.22]), which indicates that far-transfer from music to non-music skills was limited, the results showed a slightly greater positive effect of music training on some of the cognitive skills and a nonsignificant effect on all the academic skills
Conclusions and recommendations for future research. The results of this meta-analysis fail to support the hypothesis that music skill transfers to cognitive or academic skills in the general population of children and young adolescents
Summary
The question of whether music-related activities in school improve young people's cognitive and academic skills has raised much interest among researchers, educators, and policy makers. Several studies have tried to establish the effectiveness of music training in enhancing children's and young adolescents' general intelligence (Rickard, Bambrick, & Gill, 2012), memory (Roden, Kreutz, & Bongard, 2012), spatial ability and mathematics (Mehr, Schachner, Katz, & Spelke, 2013), and literacy skills (Slater et al, 2014), among others (for a review, see Miendlarzewska & Trost, 2013). Several specific curricula have been designed to develop those cognitive skills involved in playing music (e.g., Kodaly method; Houlahan & Tacka, 2015). If music training enhances children's and young adolescents' cognitive skills and school grades, schools might consider implementing additional musical activities
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