Music lessons are associated with improved motor and reasoning skills, research suggests

A pilot study by Goldsmiths psychologists has shown that in one academic year, children who took more than one hour of extra curricular individual music lessons per week developed significantly better hand/eye coordination and nonverbal reasoning skills than their peers, who received less than one hour of statutory group music lessons.

Dawn Rose, Professor Pamela Heaton and Dr Alice Jones Bartoli studied 21 female and 17 male pupils aged 7-9 over the course of a year as half the children began to learn violin, piano/keyboard, tenor horn or drums (the ‘More Music Group’).

The children were matched with a group who had not chosen to learn an instrument in several schools around the UK (the ‘Less Music Group’) but were still receiving music lessons as part of the curriculum provision. The researchers measured an array of cognitive abilities, aptitudes and behaviours at the start and end of the school year.

While it was unsurprising that the More Music Group scored higher (though not significantly) than the Less Music Group both at the start and end of the year on the measure of musical aptitude, it was encouraging that the Less Music Group also improved their tonal and rhythmic abilities significantly over the year.

As a measure of gross and fine motor control, the research used the Movement ABC-2 (a test that assesses motor skills) and found a significant increase in performance for the Aiming and Catching component for the More Music Group. The subtest driving this effect required the participants to throw a beanbag onto a marked target, suggesting an improvement in hand-eye coordination. 

Both groups were also tested using the Weschler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence to obtain data on vocabulary, nonverbal reasoning, spatial ability and semantic processing. Previous research in Canada (Schellenberg, 2004) has reported increases in IQ associated with musical learning, and the results of this study showed a change in a similar direction. The improvement was driven by a subtest known as Matrix Reasoning, which is a measure of fluid intelligence.

Research in transferable skills continues

The researchers advise that this paper is a work in progress and also that their small pilot study of 38 children means that results should be considered with caution, but the longitudinal nature of the study supports the suggestion of an applied advantage for those having musical training in several areas after only one year.

“Naturally, individual differences are likely to be dependent on instrument choice, teacher relationship and intensity of practice. However, there appears to be an overall effect that musical training enhances visuo-spatial skills which extends to aiming and catching abilities,” explains Dawn.

“Conducting research in a school environment is often difficult. Nonetheless, these initial findings are further supported by another of our studies which showed that teachers and parents reported that musically trained pupils were better at self-regulating their behaviour over the course of the year.”

A study of cognitive and behavioural transfer effects associated with children learning musical instruments for the first year over one academic year by Dawn Rose, Alice Jones Bartoli and Pamela Heaton is published in the Autumn edition of The Psychology of Education Review.