Studies Show that Music Imporves Cognitive Abilities, Verbal Intelligence in Children
The link between music and intelligence has been widely discussed in the media, even becoming a part of pop culture as the so-called “Mozart effect.” While many people may look down their noses at the millions of copies of “Baby Einstein” cds sold, filled with Mozart and other classical music and even listened to before a baby is born, the evidence for the relationship between musical training and exposure and increased intelligence is becoming more and more significant. A new study published in Psychological Science details a study in which the verbal intelligence of 4- to 6- year olds was improved through musical training. The study, which focused on 48 children, employed two groups of children, one of whom was taught the fundamental concepts of music–pitch, rhythm, melody, etc.–and one group of whom was not trained with music but with visual art concepts.
The findings of the study were irrefutable. In the words of the study’s authors,
When children were retested five to 20 days post-program, researchers found no significant increases in verbal intelligence or brain changes for the children who completed the visual art training module. However, they found quite a different result in the children who took the music-based training: 90 percent of those children exhibited intelligence improvements – five times larger than the other group – on a measure of vocabulary knowledge, as well as increased accuracy and reaction time.
An increase of 90% is nothing short of a resounding and decisive illustration of music’s relationship to the brain’s other cognitive abilities. This particular study, though, is interesting for its area of focus. Unlike many other studies, which widely tout music’s ability to increase math, spatial, and reasoning skills in young children, this study focuses on the link between verbal skills and music, which makes quite a bit of sense when one realizes that much of human culture has been passed down through generations over thousands of years using only oral culture and verbal memory. As more of these studies continue to reveal their findings, it’s a good thing to realize that music feeds more than just the soul–it feeds our brains in a very real way.
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