“Student musicians perform better than their peers on a variety of measures, including getting better grades,” writes Tom Jacobs in Tuesday’s (12/3) Pacific Standard (Santa Barbara, California). “But the chicken-and-egg question lingers: Is this effect due to their musical training? Or are sharper, more motivated kids more likely to take up an instrument? … New research from Germany presents evidence that improved academic performance truly is a result of musical training. ‘Even after controlling for a large number of parental background differences, learning a musical instrument is associated with better cognitive skills and school grades, as well as higher conscientiousness, openness and ambition,’ report Adrian Hille and Jurgen Schupp of the German Institute for Economic Research. Reverse causality is ‘highly unlikely to entirely explain our results,’ they add. Hille and Schupp … found musically active kids are ‘more conscientious, open and ambitious’ than their non-musical peers … ‘Music improves cognitive and non-cognitive skills more than twice as much as sports, theater or dance,’ they write. The researchers concede they cannot rule out the possibility that smarter, more emotionally open kids are more likely to become music students. But their analysis … suggests the opposite is far more likely.”
Posted December 5, 2013
