TY - JOUR
T1 - Cognitive and academic benefits of music training with children
T2 - A multilevel meta-analysis
AU - Sala, Giovanni
AU - Gobet, Fernand
N1 - Funding Information:
A previous version of this meta-analysis was presented at the 41st Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society in Montr?al (July 2019). The article published in the Conference Proceedings reports some pilot analyses on a subset of the studies included in the present version. The data that support the findings of this study are openly available in OSF at https://osf.io/rquye/.
PY - 2020/11
Y1 - 2020/11
N2 - Music training has repeatedly been claimed to positively impact children’s cognitive skills and academic achievement (literacy and mathematics). This claim relies on the assumption that engaging in intellectually demanding activities fosters particular domain-general cognitive skills, or even general intelligence. The present meta-analytic review (N = 6,984, k = 254, m = 54) shows that this belief is incorrect. Once the quality of study design is controlled for, the overall effect of music training programs is null (g¯ ≈ 0) and highly consistent across studies (τ2 ≈ 0). Results of Bayesian analyses employing distributional assumptions (informative priors) derived from previous research in cognitive training corroborate these conclusions. Small statistically significant overall effects are obtained only in those studies implementing no random allocation of participants and employing non-active controls (g¯ ≈ 0.200, p <.001). Interestingly, music training is ineffective regardless of the type of outcome measure (e.g., verbal, non-verbal, speed-related, etc.), participants’ age, and duration of training. Furthermore, we note that, beyond meta-analysis of experimental studies, a considerable amount of cross-sectional evidence indicates that engagement in music has no impact on people’s non-music cognitive skills or academic achievement. We conclude that researchers’ optimism about the benefits of music training is empirically unjustified and stems from misinterpretation of the empirical data and, possibly, confirmation bias.
AB - Music training has repeatedly been claimed to positively impact children’s cognitive skills and academic achievement (literacy and mathematics). This claim relies on the assumption that engaging in intellectually demanding activities fosters particular domain-general cognitive skills, or even general intelligence. The present meta-analytic review (N = 6,984, k = 254, m = 54) shows that this belief is incorrect. Once the quality of study design is controlled for, the overall effect of music training programs is null (g¯ ≈ 0) and highly consistent across studies (τ2 ≈ 0). Results of Bayesian analyses employing distributional assumptions (informative priors) derived from previous research in cognitive training corroborate these conclusions. Small statistically significant overall effects are obtained only in those studies implementing no random allocation of participants and employing non-active controls (g¯ ≈ 0.200, p <.001). Interestingly, music training is ineffective regardless of the type of outcome measure (e.g., verbal, non-verbal, speed-related, etc.), participants’ age, and duration of training. Furthermore, we note that, beyond meta-analysis of experimental studies, a considerable amount of cross-sectional evidence indicates that engagement in music has no impact on people’s non-music cognitive skills or academic achievement. We conclude that researchers’ optimism about the benefits of music training is empirically unjustified and stems from misinterpretation of the empirical data and, possibly, confirmation bias.
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U2 - 10.3758/s13421-020-01060-2
DO - 10.3758/s13421-020-01060-2
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85088840027
VL - 48
SP - 1429
EP - 1441
JO - Memory and Cognition
JF - Memory and Cognition
SN - 0090-502X
IS - 8
ER -