When the music's over: does music skill transfer to children's and young adolescents' cognitive and academic skills? A meta-analysis

Sala, Giovanni and Gobet, Fernand ORCID: 0000-0002-9317-6886 (2016) When the music's over: does music skill transfer to children's and young adolescents' cognitive and academic skills? A meta-analysis. Educational Research Review, 20. pp. 55-67. ISSN 1747-938X

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Abstract

Music training has been recently claimed to enhance children and young adolescents' cognitive and academic skills. However, substantive research on transfer of skills suggests that far-transfer - i.e., the transfer of skills between two areas only loosely related to each other - occurs rarely. In this meta-analysis, we examined the available experimental evidence regarding the impact of music training on children and young adolescents' cognitive and academic skills. The results of the random-effects models showed (a) a small overall effect size (d¯=0.16); (b) slightly greater effect sizes with regard to intelligence (d¯=0.35) and memory-related outcomes (d¯=0.34); and (c) an inverse relation between the size of the effects and the methodological quality of the study design. These results suggest that music training does not reliably enhance children and young adolescents' cognitive or academic skills, and that previous positive findings were probably due to confounding variables.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	© The Authors
Divisions:	CPNSS
Subjects:	B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology L Education > L Education (General) M Music and Books on Music > MT Musical instruction and study
Date Deposited:	25 Oct 2019 13:30
Last Modified:	16 Apr 2024 18:36
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/102211

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