program significantly increased.”
The experiment has since been replicated with 6-year-olds, by
researchers in Canada.
Infants are more social, too
So far, we can detect the social benefits of music lessons in older adults,
undergraduates, and elementary-school children.
How far back can you
push this? Can you detect social benefits if you give music lessons to
infants
? You can’t go much earlier than that. Amazingly, the researchers
found similar findings.
Six-month-old babies took a parent-and-child music class for six
months. The instruction was based
roughly on Suzuki methodology, one
that requires active group participation. Activities involved lots of singing,
lots of banging on instruments, and learning songs in class, which parents
were asked to repeat at home. Not surprisingly, this group was called the
Active Group. A second group served as the control. These parents and tots
instead listened to
Baby Einstein
music
CDs while playing with toys
together. Predictably, they were called the Passive Group.
You can actually measure social competence in babies using a complex
instrument called the Infant Behavior Questionnaire (IBQ), which assesses
infants on 14 aspects of temperament. Researchers measured both groups to
get a baseline. Then the experiment commenced. How did the babies do? If
you are a music advocate, get ready for some spine-tingling data.
The Active Group outpaced the Passive Group socially in virtually
every way you can measure it. They smiled more. They laughed more. They
were much easier to calm down when they were stressed. In limitation
assessments (a measure of how well you react to unexpected stimuli), they
exhibited much less stress than their Passive counterparts. The infants’
gestures—such as waving goodbye and pointing—were
improved, a
companion paper showed. That may be important. Such prelinguistic
communication leads to more positive social interactions between parent
and child. And
that
improves infant cognition in virtually every way you
can measure it.
What’s going on here? We don’t know for sure. The Passive Group was
exposed to the same amount of music as the Active Group, as well as the
same amount of social interaction. Making music may simply provide an
environment where one gets to exercise greater
social cooperation and
generally prosocial behaviors than when playing with toys. In this view, the
secret sauce lies not with the music, but with the interaction. Or it could be
the music itself, for both groups of children experienced sustained
interaction with their parents. Either way, a method involving music has
been found
to make kids more empathetic, more relational.
Which is the point.
Though these and several other experiments are interventions, showing
whether music training directly caused the effects, the vast majority of
studies are associative in nature. Still, taken together, these studies suggest
—sometimes strongly—that music training boosts foundational speech-
processing tasks, spatial skills, the
detection of emotional cues, empathy,
and baby-size social skills. Next, let’s look at the effects of simply listening
to music.
Music changes your mood
“The word is
breast
!” my mother yelled from the kitchen. This brought my
13-year-old mind very quickly to attention. She clarified: “Music soothes
the savage
breast
! I believe it was from some old play …” her voice trailed
off.
I was in the TV room, watching a Bugs Bunny cartoon called
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