Music and Cognitive Abilities

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systematic andreliable,and(c)theyaremorelikelytoresultfromhearingor playing music than from other activities. Unlike in other cul- tures, where virtually everyone participates in music making, musical experiences in Western society typically involve lis- tening and, only in some cases, lessons and performing. Music listening is ubiquitous, both purposefully (e.g., listening to the radio) and incidentally (e.g., background music in stores and restaurants). By contrast, relatively few individuals take music lessons for several years. The consequences of music listening are likely to differ quantitatively and qualitatively from those of music lessons. MUSIC LISTENING Widespread interest in the potential bene ts of music listening was sparked by the publication of an article (Rauscher, Shaw, & Ky,1993)thatreportedsuperiorspatialabilitiesforparticipants who listened to a recording of music composed by Mozart com- pared to those who sat in silence or listened to relaxation in- structions. The nding, known as the 8 8Mozart effect, 9 9 was publicized widely in the popularmedia.Although the effect was found to be brief (lasting 10 315 minutes) and the participants were undergraduates, the news captured the public imagination and led to social-policy changes. These included the distribu- tion ofa CDofMozart 9s music to every babyborn inGeorgiaand the formation ofacottageindustry ofmusic recordings designed to make infants smarter. Presumably, the underlying rationale wasthatiftheshort-termeffectisreliable,long-termexposureto music in infancy 4when brain plasticity is greatest 4might fa- cilitate neural connections that could have long-term impact. Subsequent replication attempts met with mixed success (Chabris et al., 1999), however, which could be attributable to the weakness of the effect or the reliance on group testing (Schellenberg,inpress).Theoriginalauthorsproposedthatpassive listening to music composed by Mozart primed spatial abilities in particular, and they attributed the replicationfailures to the wrong musicorthewrongtask.Buttheirproposalofcross-modalpriming between two unrelated domains is at odds with the available re- search. Priming is a relatively robust psychological phenomenon that occurs between stimuli with an obvious link. In language, for example, cross-modal priming effects are evident for subsequent presentationsofthesameword,arelatedword,ahomonym,andthe sentential structure implied by the word (i.e., repetition , semantic , phonological , and syntactic priming, respectively). The meta-analysis in Chabris et al. (1999) motivated specu- lation that the Mozart effect, when evident, could be explained as an artifact of arousal. Optimal levels of arousal (i.e., physical and mental activation) have widespread, facilitative effects on performance. In line with this view, a colleague and I (Nantais andSchellenberg,1999)replicatedtheMozarteffect(compared to sitting in silence) but we also found a 8 8Schubert effect 9 9 of Address correspondence to Glenn Schellenberg, Department of Psy- chology, University of Toronto at Mississauga, Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, L5L 1C6; e-mail: g.schellenberg@utoronto.ca. CURRENT DIRECTIONS IN PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE Volume 14 4Number 6 317 Copyright r 2005 American Psychological Society identical magnitude. When listening to Mozart was contrasted with listening to a narrated story, the effect disappeared (see Fig. 1) but performance interacted with preferences. Listeners who preferred Mozart performed better after listening to Mozart than to the story. Listeners who preferred the story showed the opposite pattern (a 8 8Stephen King effect 9 9). Thompson, Husain, and I (Thompson, Schellenberg, & Hu- sain, 2001) subsequently formulated the arousal-and-mood hypothesis :Listening toMozart is oneexampleofa stimulusthat in uences the perceiver 9s arousal level and mood, which can affect performance on a variety of cognitive tasks. Our partici- pants heard a fast-tempo piece by Mozart in a major (happy- sounding) key, or a slow-tempo piece by Albinoni in a minor (sad-sounding) key. As predicted, we observed a Mozart effect (comparedtosilence)butno 8 8Albinonieffect 9 9onatestofspatial abilities. We also found that arousal and mood were higher and more positive after listening to Mozart than after listening to Albinoni. The effect size of the Mozart advantage on the spatial testwasvirtuallyidenticalinmagnitudetotheMozartadvantage in arousal and mood. When changes in arousal or mood were held constant by statistical means, the Mozart advantage on the spatialtestdisappeared.Inanotherstudy(Husain,Thompson,& Schellenberg, 2002), the tempo (fast or slow) and mode (major or minor) of the same Mozart piece were manipulated before listeners completed a spatial task. The manipulations led to different arousal levels and moods across conditions, which, in turn, accounted for the majority of the variance in spatial abil- ities. Yet another study tested nonspatial abilities after under- graduates listened to Mozart or to Albinoni (Schellenberg, Nakata, Hunter, & Tamoto, in press). When the listening expe- rience resulted indifferencesinarousalandmood,performance on a test of processing speed was also better following Mozart than it was following Albinoni. Paper-and-pencil measures of arousal and mood are not available for children, but the available ndings reveal en- hanced cognitive performance after listening to music that is thought to be arousing and pleasant for the age group under investigation. For example, Hallam and I (Schellenberg and Hallam, in press) reported a 8 8Blur effect 9 9 for 10- and 11-year- olds,whoperformed betteronaspatialtestafter listeningtopop music(byBlurandotherbands)comparedtomusiccomposedby Mozart or a scientific discussion. In a test of creativity among younger children (Schellenberg et al., in press), 5-year-olds drewwithcrayonsafterlisteningtoMozart,Albinoni,orfamiliar children 9s songs, or after singing familiar songs. Drawing times were longer, and the drawings were judged to be more creative, for the children exposed to familiar songs (a 8 8children 9s play songeffect 9 9).Theeffectsdidnotdifferbetweenthelisteningand singing groups (see Fig. 2). In sum, music listening (or singing) can lead to enhanced performance on a variety of tests of cognitive ability. These ef- fectsaremediatedbyarousalandmoodandareunlikelytodiffer fromthosethatariseasaconsequenceofexposuretononmusical stimuli that have similar emotional impact (e.g., giving partici- pants a cup of coffee or a small bag of candy; see Isen, 2000; Smith, Osborne, Mann, Jones, & White, 2004). Listening to music composed by Mozart does not have unique or special consequences for spatial abilities. Rather, upbeat, age-appro- priate music can improve listeners 9 arousal level and mood, at least for short periods. In turn, effects of arousal and mood ex- tend beyond measures of spatial ability to tests of processing speed and creativity. In principle, similar short-term cognitive bene ts might be evident among infants, whose arousal level is altered by exposure to maternal singing (Shen eld, Trehub, & Nakata, 2003). It is well established that infants perform best in the laboratory when they are alert and content. Mozart-Silence Schubert-Silence Mozart-Story 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 Mean Paper-Folding-and-Cutting Score Experimental Comparison Music Control Fig. 1. Mean scores on the paper-folding-and-cutting spatial test in the music-listening and control conditions (Nantais & Schellenberg, 1999). The >gure shows a Mozart effect (left), a Schubert effect (middle), and, when the control condition involved listening to a story, no effect (right). Mozart Albinoni Familiar- Listening Familiar- Singing 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 Mean Rating of Children's Drawings Musical Experience Fig. 2. Mean adult ratings of children 9s drawings (Schellenberg et al., 2005). Children drew after one of four musical experiences: listening to Mozart, listening to Albinoni, listening to familiar children 9s songs, or singing familiar songs. Adult raters (blind to group membership) rated the drawings. Higher ratings indicate more favorable appraisals of the drawings relative to a baseline (no music) drawing. 318 Volume 14 4Number 6 Music and Cognitive Abilities MUSIC LESSONS We turn now to the issue of whether music lessons confer non- musical bene ts. I (Schellenberg, 2004) conducted the only controlled experiment to date that included random assignment of individual children to music lessons or comparison condi- tions.Onehundredandforty-four6-year-oldswereadministered an entire standardized IQ test (the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-III, or WISC-III) before entering rst grade (at age 6) and again between rst and second grade (at age 7). In the interim,twogroupsofchildrenreceived36weeksofkeyboardor vocal instruction. Two control groups received drama lessons or nolessons.Allfourgroupshadreliableincreasesinfull-scaleIQ from the rst to the second testing session. Such increases are a known consequence of attending school. The two music groups did not differ in this regard, nor did the two control groups, but the increase in IQ was greater for the music groups than for the control groups (see Fig. 3). This difference was not a conse- quence of elevated performance on a specific subset of intel- lectual abilities(e.g.,verbal orspatial). Comparedtothe control groups, the music groups had larger increases across the four mainareasofintellectualabilitymeasuredbytheWISC-III(i.e., the four index scores, see Fig. 3). An incidental nding was that thedramagrouphadincreasesinadaptivesocialskillsthatwere larger than those in the other three groups. This experiment provided evidence that music lessons cause improvements in intellectual ability. My nding of broad intel- lectual bene ts of music lessons is also consistent with the lit- erature as a whole (Schellenberg, in press), which includes reports of positive associations between music lessons and reading, mathematical, verbal, and spatial abilities. Would music lessons of longer duration be accompanied by larger in- tellectual bene ts? Because longer-term experimental studies would likely suffer from differential attrition across conditions, I (Schellenberg, 2005) tested this question correlationally. In contrast to previous research, I also measured confounding variables such as family income and parents 9 education, which were held constant in the statistical analyses. The participants were 147 children and 150 undergraduates. For the children, outcome measures included the entire WISC- IIIaswellasastandardizedtestofeducationalachievementand grades in school. The number of months of music lessons had a modest but positive association with each outcome variable that remained reliable when family income, parents 9 education, and involvement in nonmusical activities were held constant. Once again, the effects were broad, extending across the four index scores and the different areas of academic achievement (math, spelling, reading) but not to social skills. Involvement in non- musical out-of-school activities was not predictive of IQ, aca- demic achievement, or social behavior. For the undergraduates, the outcome measure was an entire adult IQ test (the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-III, or WAIS-III). The association be- tween years of playing music regularly and IQ was smaller than the one observed in childhood but it was statistically reliable even after accounting for individual differences in family in- come and parents 9 education. These correlational ndings ex- tend those of the experimental study by showing that real-world effects of musical training on intellectual abilities are (a) larger with longer periods of training, (b) long lasting, (c) not attrib- utable to obvious confounding variables, and (d) distinct from those of nonmusical out-of-school activities. What are the underlying mechanisms driving the association between music lessons and intellectual ability? One possibility is that because music lessons are school-like, the intellectual bene ts of attending school are exaggerated by the positive impact of additional schooling on IQ. From this perspective, drama lessons might be insuf ciently school-like (e.g., they include pretending and dressing up), although other out-of- school activities such as reading or chess lessons ought to have bene ts similar to music. Music lessons would be special only becausetheyrepresentaschool-likeactivitythatmanychildren enjoy and choose to do on a regular basis. A second possibility is that the association stems from the con- stellation of abilities that music lessons train and improve 4abil- itiesincludingfocusedattentionandconcentration,memorization, reading music, ne-motor skills, expressing emotions, and so on. Although the association could be a consequence of improvement inone of theseabilities ora particular subset,the diffuse nature of theassociationimplicatesthecontributionofmultiplefactors.The particular type of music lessons (e.g., the instrument or teaching method) might have more specific effects on outcome measures otherthanIQ.Forexample,keyboardlessonsareasgoodasdrama lessons in improving children 9s ability to decode the emotions conveyed by prosody in speech, but voice lessons have no bene- cial effect (Thompson, Schellenberg, & Husain, 2004). FSIQ VC PO FD PS 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 Mean Difference Score WISC-III Outcome Keyboard Vocal Drama No Lessons Fig. 3. Mean difference scores on the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-III (WISC-III) outcome measures for groups of children re- ceiving keyboard lessons, vocal lessons, drama lessons, or no lessons (Schellenberg, 2004). The music groups had larger increases than the drama-lessonsandno-lessons(control)groups.(FSIQ 5 Full-ScaleIQ,VC 5 Verbal Comprehension Index, PO 5 Perceptual Organization Index, FD 5 FreedomfromDistractibilityIndex,PS 5 ProcessingSpeedIndex.) Volume 14 4Number 6 319 E. Glenn Schellenberg A third possibility is that music promotes intellectual develop- mentbecauseofitsinherentlyabstractnature.Forexample,atune isde nedsolelybyrelationalinformation.Alistenercanidentifya particular tune (e.g., 8 8Yankee Doodle 9 9) when it is played fast or slow,atahighoralowpitchlevel,onapianooraguitar,andsoon. In other words, tunes are abstractions. Listeners 9 representations must generalize even farther to patterns that have similar but not identical relational information (e.g., variations on a theme). To illustrate, the opening bars of Beethoven 9s Fifth Symphony have a repeated motive that varies in absolute pitch (different starting tone) and in relative pitch (major third then minor third), yet lis- teners hear the second motive as a repetition because of its iden- ticalrhythmandmelodiccontour.Learningtothinkabstractlyand to recognize musical similarities across contexts could facilitate intellectual development more generally. Finally, learning a musical language could have cognitive bene ts similar to those evident in bilingual children (Craik & Bialystok, 2005). Although this view has intuitive appeal be- cause music and language are both auditory communication systems, the positive effects of bilingualism are evident for uid intelligence (i.e., executive control) but not for crystallized in- telligence (e.g., knowledge acquired through experience, such as vocabulary), whereas the effects of music lessons appear to extend to both domains. CONCLUSION Does music make you smarter? The answer is a quali ed yes. Music listening and music lessons can lead to short-term and long-term cognitive bene ts, respectively. This positive answer isquali edbecausetheshort-termbene tsofmusiclisteningdo not appear to differ from those associated with other stimuli that optimize arousal level or elicit mild positive affect. The mech- anisms driving the intellectual bene ts of music lessons remain more obscure. Similar bene ts could be derived from other out- of-school activities that are similarly school-like. Nonetheless, musiclessonsmightbespecialinthisregardbecause(a)theyare a school-like activity that many children enjoy, (b) multiple skills are trained in music lessons, (c) music is a domain that improvesabstractreasoning,or(d)acquiringmusicalknowledge issimilartoacquiringasecondlanguage.Futureresearchcould identify the underlying mechanisms more clearly. Ismusicaquick xtotheproblemofintelligence?Theanswer is most definitely no. Short-term positive bene ts of music lis- tening dissipate rapidly as listeners 9 arousal level and mood uctuatewithtimeandexperience.Althoughmusiclessonshave relativelylong-termbene ts,theeffortinvolved(weeklylessons, dailypractice)canhardlybeconstruedasaquick x.Depending ontheperspectiveofthechildandhisorherparents,thebene ts of a few IQ points may or may not be worth the costs in time, money, and effort. Moreover, different extracurricular activities (e.g.,dramalessons)havesalutaryeffectsinotherdomains(e.g., social skills) that couldbe as valuable as the modest increase in IQ attributable to music lessons. The simplest take-home mes- sageisthatextracurricularactivitiesbene tchilddevelopment. Recommended Reading Isen, A. (2000). (See References) Schellenberg, E.G. (2004). (See References) Schellenberg, E.G. (in press). (See References) Acknowledgments 4 Funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and the International FoundationforMusicResearch.CraigChambers,KateMcLean, and Sandra Trehub provided helpful comments on earlier ver- sions of the manuscript. REFERENCES Chabris,C.F.,Steele,K.M.,DallaBella,S.,Peretz,I.,Dunlop,T.,Dawe, L.A., Humphrey, G.K., Shannon, R.A., Kirby, J.L. Jr., Olmstead, C.G., & Rauscher,F.H. (1999). Prelude orrequiem for the 8Mozart Effect 9? Nature , 400 , 826 3828. Craik, F., & Bialystok, E. (2005). Intelligence and executive control: Evidence from aging and bilingualism. Cortex , 41 , 222 3224. Husain, G., Thompson, W.F., & Schellenberg, E.G. (2002). Effects of musical tempo and mode on arousal, mood, and spatial abilities. Music Perception , 20 , 151 3171. Isen, A.M. (2000). Positive affect and decision making. In M. Lewis & J.M. Haviland-Jones (Eds.), Handbook of Emotions (2nd ed., pp. 417 3435). New York: Guilford. Nantais, K.M., & Schellenberg, E.G. (1999). The Mozart effect: An artifact of preference. Psychological Science , 10 , 370 3373. Rauscher, F.H., Shaw, G.L., & Ky, K.N. (1993). Music and spatial task performance. Nature , 365 , 611. Schellenberg, E.G. (2004). Music lessons enhance IQ. Psychological Science , 15 , 511 3514. Schellenberg, E.G. (2005). Long-term positive associations between music lessons and IQ. Manuscript submitted for publication. Schellenberg, E.G. (in press) Exposure to music: The truth about the consequences. In G.E. McPherson (Ed.), The child as musician: A handbookofmusicaldevelopment .Oxford,U.K.:OxfordUniversity Press. Schellenberg, E.G., & Hallam, S. (in press). Music listening and cog- nitiveabilitiesin10and11yearolds:TheBlureffect. Annalsofthe New York Academy of Sciences . Schellenberg, E.G., Nakata, T., Hunter, P.G., & Tamoto, S. (in press). Exposure to music and cognitive performance: Tests of children and adults. Psychology of Music . Shen eld, T., Trehub, S.E., & Nakata, T. (2003). Maternal singing modulates infant arousal. Psychology of Music , 31 , 365 3375. Smith, B.D., Osborne, A., Mann, M., Jones, H., & White, T. (2004). Arousal and behavior: Biopsychological effects of caffeine. In A. Nehlig(Ed.), Coffee,tea,chocolate,andthebrain:Nutrition,brain, and behavior (pp. 35 352). Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press. Thompson, W.F., Schellenberg, E.G., & Husain, G. (2001). Arousal, mood and the Mozart effect. Psychological Science , 12 , 248 3251. Thompson, W.F., Schellenberg, E.G., & Husain, G. (2004). Decoding speech prosody: Do music lessons help? Emotion , 4 , 46 364. 320 Volume 14 4Number 6 Music and Cognitive Abilities

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