Just listening to classical music is the so-called Mozart effect. - does not make you smarter. I presented the basis for this conclusion elsewhere. In this article we will look at the question: “Music lessons make a child smarter? Do music lessons have side benefits that extend to non-musical areas of the intellect? Better reason, math and language comprehension? The answer to this question is as interesting as the answer.
Why is this question of interest?
Here is one answer. Children limit their free time to invest in extracurricular activities, and parents must choose between activities for their children. If the choice between, for example, ballet and music lessons, and music, as is known, increases the intellect, but ballet is not, this may be a sufficient reason to choose music over the ballet. Ballet may be good due to the fact that the music may not be, for example, for the skills of coordination of movements, but at least now the parent has a more solid foundation for which you can choose.
How can we NOT answer the question: Do music lessons improve IQ?
Music lessons make a child smarter? This is not something that can be answered with common sense and the facts of personal experience. It may be tempting to reason from your observation that all the children you know who take music lessons are doing well in school so that these lessons help them develop their intelligence and success in school. But this conclusion is not justified. Why not? Because it is also reasonable that both of them study better at school and study music, because they are from a certain socio-economic class, where the average IQ is higher for a start. Children with a high level of intelligence, more often than others, take music lessons, because more educated and wealthier parents tend to provide music lessons for their children - this is part of the culture of the more educated and wealthy to conduct music lessons. Not all educated and wealthy parents, but many of them. But this does not necessarily mean that music lessons have any impact on children. developing intelligence. Many educated and wealthy parents also buy certain brands of clothing for their children, but children’s children don’t make them smarter.
So we can't try to figure out, taking music lessons, improving IQ, like this.
How can we answer the question: Do music lessons improve IQ?
To find out the answer to this question, we need to conduct an experiment. We need to set things up: take many children from different walks of life and arbitrarily assign (using a coin) half of these children to music lessons during the year, and half to some other extracurricular activity for the year - for example, ballet or football. We test both groups of children in the IQ exam before class, and then again after class and see if there is a difference between the two groups. If there is a difference - if those who took music lessons at an average level higher on an IQ test, we know that this is not due to family background (because family backgrounds are mixed evenly in two groups). If we find a difference, we will also be more confident that the gain of intelligence depends on the music, and not on any additional learning activities (be it music, drama, ballet, karate or football). In essence, by performing this kind of critical experiment, we are convinced that we have determined the influence of musical lessons on intelligence.
Schellenberg Critical Experiment
In 2004, someone finally did this science experiment: Glenn Schellenberg from the Department of Psychology at the University of Toronto. He advertised in a local community newspaper, offering free weekly art classes for 6-year-olds for a year. 144 children were assigned randomly to one of four groups, in each group there were 36 children. Group 1 was given keyboard lessons, group 2 was given voice / singing lessons, group 3 was given drama lessons, and in group 4 there were no extra classes. Teachers were trained by professional women. Children in all groups conducted an intelligence test called WISC-III, both before and after a year of training. WISC-III is the most highly regarded and widely used intelligence test for children. At the beginning of the experiment, all four groups had the same average level of intelligence. The children in each group, of course, differed in their level of intelligence, but the average intelligence of each group was the same. It is obviously important for us to draw any conclusions about the impact of different types of lessons.
And what did Schellenberg find? Do IQ music lessons enhance?
The first interesting conclusion was that all four groups of children showed an increase in IQ after a year, even a group that did nothing. What explains this overall increase in IQ for all children? An increase in IQ, as is known, is a common consequence of entering high school. Since all these children started learning during the experiment, it is easy to explain this overall increase in IQ due to the simple attendance at school.
But - and this is the point - the two groups of musical lesson significantly increase profits in IQ than drama and “lesson” groups. From this data it can be concluded that taking music lessons, but not drama lessons, caused an increase in intelligence in addition to the successes gained in attending school. The type of music lesson doesn’t matter (keyboard or voice); Both groups had the same average IQ score after a year of lessons. And both musical groups had a higher IQ score of 3 points compared to drama groups and n0 lessons that did not differ from each other on the IQ scale.
This relative superiority of IQ in musical groups was not limited to one particular aspect of intelligence, such as spatial intelligence, but was found in all but 2 of 12 subtests of the WISC-III intelligence test, in a wide range of cognitive abilities that require intelligence. This helped all the subtests of what is known as “liquid intelligence” - the ability to reason and find relationships in a way that does not depend on background knowledge.
Effect size: how do we judge this?
The 3 points of IQ do not look like a big effect, but there is a way to look at this gain in IQ, which will help evaluate it and assess its importance. Compare this with nature, above all, to school. The average IQ gain in school was about 4 points. An additional gain in conducting music lessons (3 points) was thus almost the same as the full experience of the school itself. Now it looks like a pretty big effect.
What is special about music?
We need to clearly say one thing. The Schellenberg experiment shows that music lessons improve IQ for six-year-olds. This does not tell us that music lessons improve IQ for older children or for adults, unfortunately. It is known that the brain of six years of age has a high plasticity. - that is, these young brains can be formed and reorganized largely by experience. Older children and adults have less brain plasticity, and it can be predicted that the year of music lessons in this case will have less impact on overall intelligence, although we do not know for sure.
Taking music lessons, knowledge and skills related to music is increasing, and this is important in itself. But the fact that the Schellenberg experiment shows that in addition to this, general cognitive abilities are also being learned and improved - indirectly. Taking music lessons is a good brain training. in this age! Music lessons attract long periods of focused attention, daily practice, reading musical notations, memorizing extended musical passages, learning various musical structures (for example, scales, chords), and progressive skills of fine-motor skills. It is not known which combination of these skills will improve general intelligence, and further research will have to investigate this question.
