Odds are, when you were a baby, your parents played classical music for you as you fell asleep because they thought it would make you smarter. This is known as the "Mozart Effect", a concept that rose to popularity in 1993 when researchers at the University of California found a temporary increase in spatial-reasoning capacity in children who listened to classical music. From that point on, parents would rock their children to sleep with Chopin playing in the background.
According to Samuel Mehr, a researcher at Harvard University, more than 80% of American think that listening to music will increase their child's intelligence and improve their grades in school. Yet, there has not been sufficient scientific evidence to support this claim. Mehr, himself, set out to better understant the Mozart Effect by performing his own tests on pre-school students.
In a recent study, Mehr divided 29 four-year-old children into two classes: visual arts and music. The children in the visual arts class would work on arts and crafts projects with their parents while the children in the music class were sung to or played music for by their parents. After six weeks of these classes, the children were then tested in four specific domains of cognition. There seemed to be no significant difference between the two groups of children. Mehr repeated the study with a larger study size and, again, no effect was found.
Though it is becoming increasingly obvious that listening to classical music will not actually make your child smarter, music-loving parents have nothing to fear. Listening to music may not effect a child's intelligence, but actually learning to play an instrument may enhance language skills, listening ability, and memory.
Nina Kraus, director of the Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory at Northwestern University, reveals that learning to play an instrument as a child can have long lasting effects. For example, Kraus studied the auditory responses of the brain stem in adults. Adults with music training in childhood showed better responses than those who had no musical training at all. According to Kraus, learning to play music enhances children's neural development. These enhancements pose many cognitive benefits for children including listening ability and memory. These changes in neural development are not temporary. They remain with the child throughout adulthood. So, while their bodies age like everyone else's, their auditory processing skills will still be present.
Many public school systems are down-grading their music departments, or cutting them out completely, to make room in the budget for subjects that actually help a child's academic achievements. What Kraus's research reveals, however, is that music is one of those subjects! Music can play a valuable role in a child's academic life. Learning to play music, for example, makes it easier for children to pick up speech in a noisy setting, allowing them to listen and understand the teacher in a crowded and noisy classroom. Unfortunately, private music lessons are expensive. This means that if music is not taught in public schools, then few children would actually have the opportunity to benefit from its cognitive effects. Kraus hopes that her research will change that and help to save and institute better music programs in public school systems.
Sources:
Mehr, Samuel. "Two Randomized Trials Provide No Consistent Evidence for Nonmusical Cognitive Benefits of Brief Preschool Music Enrichment". PLOS One. 11 Dec. 2013. Web.13 Dec. 2013. http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0082007
Mientka, Mattew. "'Mozart Effect' Dispelled: Music Study Does Not Make Children Smarter". Medical Daily. 11 Dec. 2013. Web. 13 Dec. 2013. http://www.medicaldaily.com/mozart-effect-dispelled-music-study-does-not-make-children-smarter-264813
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