Music Lessons Enhance Iq

in press, Psychological Science 1

MUSIC LESSONS ENHANCE IQ E. Glenn Schellenberg
University of Toronto, Mississauga, Ontario, Canada

Abstract—The idea that music makes you smarter has received considerable attention from scholars and the media. The present report is the first to test this hypothesis directly with random assignment of a large sample of children (N = 144) t o two differenttypes of music lessons (keyboard or voice) or t o control groups that received drama lessons or no lessons. IQ was measured before and after the lessons with the WISC-III (Wechsler, 1991). Compared to children in the control groups, children in the music groups exhibited greater increases i n full-scale IQ from pre- to post-lessons. The effect was relatively small but it generalized across IQsubtests, index scores, and a standardized measure of academic achievement. Nevertheless, children in the drama group exhibited substantial pre- to post-test improvements in adaptive social behavior that were not evident in the music groups.

Current interest in associations between music and intelligence stems from two independent areas of research (Schellenberg, 2003). One, the so-called Mozarteffect, focuses on short-term effects of simple listening to music. It refers to the finding that passive listening to music composed by Mozart produces temporary increases in spatial abilities (Hetland, 2000b; Rauscher, Shaw, & Ky, 1993). Subsequent studies indicate, however, that the Mozart effect is difficult to replicate (Steel, Bass, & Crook, 1999; Steele, Dalla Bella, et al., 1999; Chabris,1999). When evident, it can be attributed to differences in arousal and mood generated by the different testing conditions (Husain, Thompson, & Schellenberg, 2002; Nantais & Schellenberg, 1999; Thompson, Schellenberg, & Husain, 2001). Compared to sitting in silence for 10 minutes, listening to Mozart induces more positive moods and relatively optimal Supported by the International Foundation forMusic Research. The keyboard and voice lessons were taught in the Royal Conservatory of Music Community School. The Conservatory also provided rooms for the drama lessons. Jane Campbell served as project coordinator. The IQ tests were administered by Khush Amaria, Erica Barbuto, Jane Campbell, Navneet Dhami, and Gavrielle Geller. Helpful comments on earlier versions of the article were provided byDenis Burnham, Isabelle Peretz, Patty Pliner, Marla Sokolowski, Kate Stevens, Bill Thompson, and Sandra Trehub. Correspondence and requests for materials should be sent to Glenn Schellenberg, Department of Psychology, University of Toronto at Mississauga, Mississauga, ON, Canada, L5L 1C6 (e-mail: g.schellenberg@utoronto.ca).

levels of arousal, which lead to higher levels of performance on tests ofspatial abilities. The focus of the present report is on a separate line of research, which examines whether music lessons have collateral benefits that extend to nonmusical areas of cognition.. Such transfer effects (see Barnett & Ceci, 2002) could be unique to children who take music lessons for extended periods of time because their experiences differ substantially from those of otherchildren. Music lessons involve long periods of focused attention, daily practice, reading musical notation, memorization of extended musical passages, learning about a variety of musical structures (e.g., intervals, scales, chords, chord progressions), and progressive mastery of technical (i.e., fine-motor) skills and the conventions governing the expression of emotions in performance. This combinationof experiences could have a positive impact on cognition, particularly during the childhood years when brain development is highly plastic and sensitive to environmental influence (Huttenlocher, 2002). Previous findings are consistent with the hypothesis that music lessons promote intellectual development. For example, musical aptitude is associated with literacy (Anvari, Trainor, Woodside &...