Cognitive Effects of Music and Dance Training in Children (ICPSR 37080)

Version Date: May 17, 2018

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Principal Investigator(s):
Annalise D'Souza, York University (Toronto, Ont.); Melody Wiseheart, York University (Toronto, Ont.)

https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR37080.v1

Version V1

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Summary

Musical training is popularly believed to improve children's cognitive ability. Early research evidence, mostly correlational, suggests that musicians outperform non-musicians on many cognitive abilities. However, recent experimental evidence has failed to replicate most benefits, leaving it unclear whether previously demonstrated effects were a direct result of learning music. While a few studies have shown some change with as little as a few weeks of training, the larger training literature shows that transfer of skills between unrelated areas is extremely rare, especially in properly controlled studies.

This study used an experimental design to assess the cause (whether music uniquely produces change) and the effect (which cognitive abilities are impacted) of the link between music and cognition. Six- to nine-year-old children (n=75) with no prior training were randomly assigned to three weeks of music or dance training. Cognitive performance before and after training was compared between trained groups, since both training forms share features of training, plus with a non-trained control group to isolate training-induced change from normal maturation. No changes were found on any measured ability (inhibitory control, working memory, task switching, processing speed, receptive vocabulary, and non-verbal intelligence).

Findings confirm evidence from the general training literature that training-induced improvements on cognitive performance are unlikely. Short-term training effects have a much narrower scope than previous evidence suggests.

Citation

D’Souza, Annalise, and Wiseheart, Melody. Cognitive Effects of Music and Dance Training in Children. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2018-05-17. https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR37080.v1

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Subject Terms

Smallest Geographic Unit

None

Restrictions

This dataset is part of ICPSR's Archives of Scientific Psychology journal database. Users should contact the Editorial Office at the American Psychological Association for information on requesting data access.

Distributor(s)

Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research
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Time Method

Cross-sectional

Universe

Children ages 6-9

Unit(s) of Observation

Individual

Data Type(s)

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Original Release Date

2018-05-17

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Notes

  • This dataset is part of ICPSR's Archives of Scientific Psychology journal database. Users should contact the Editorial Office at the American Psychological Association for information on requesting data access.

  • The public-use data files in this collection are available for access by the general public. Access does not require affiliation with an ICPSR member institution.

  • One or more files in this data collection have special restrictions. Restricted data files are not available for direct download from the website; click on the Restricted Data button to learn more.

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Archives of Scientific Psychology

This dataset is made available in connection to an article in Archives of Scientific Psychology, the first open-access, open-methods journal of the American Psychological Association (APA). Archiving and dissemination of this research is part of APA's commitment to collaborative data sharing.