Cognitive and academic benefits of music training with children: A multilevel meta-analysis

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 genera...

Celý popis

Uložené v:
Podrobná bibliografia
Vydané v:Memory & cognition Ročník 48; číslo 8; s. 1429 - 1441
Hlavní autori: Sala, Giovanni, Gobet, Fernand
Médium: Journal Article
Jazyk:English
Vydavateľské údaje: New York Springer US 01.11.2020
Springer Nature B.V
Predmet:
ISSN:0090-502X, 1532-5946, 1532-5946
On-line prístup:Získať plný text
Tagy: Pridať tag
Žiadne tagy, Buďte prvý, kto otaguje tento záznam!
Popis
Shrnutí: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 ( τ 2 ≈ 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.
Bibliografia:ObjectType-Article-1
ObjectType-Evidence Based Healthcare-3
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-2
content type line 14
content type line 23
ISSN:0090-502X
1532-5946
1532-5946
DOI:10.3758/s13421-020-01060-2