I recently stumbled across an interesting study via Dan Willingham, who always manages to point out insightful research on education and psychology. This particular study caught my eye because it revisits the persistent myth we discussed in our book, More Urban Myths about Learning and Education: the seductive but questionable idea of a kind of magical far transfer happening so that when you learn A, you get better in B.
You know the claim: learning one complex skill (like playing chess or learning music) will supposedly boost completely unrelated skills or cognitive abilities. In this new research, the authors tackled the popular claim that music training improves children’s ability to recognize emotions in voices and faces. It seems logical, right? Music can be emotional, nuanced, and socially embedded, so surely training in music should enhance socioemotional skills.
Well, as is often the case with appealing ideas in education, the reality is less cooperative. The study consisted of two parts. First, a robust longitudinal intervention involved 110 children who either learned music, basketball, or nothing new for two years. The results? Music training improved some motor skills and auditory memory, but it didn’t help at all with recognizing emotions or other cognitive and socioemotional tasks.
The second part, involving nearly 200 children, compared those attending a music school to those who didn’t. Again, musical training initially seemed to correlate with better emotion recognition, but once the researchers accounted for socioeconomic status, musical abilities, or short-term memory, the supposed benefits disappeared entirely. This reminds me of the original study of Thorndike over a century ago in which he examined the influence of learning Latin on other languages. The benefit also disappeared when he corrected for social-economic background.
These findings are yet another cautionary tale about the myth of a magical far transfer. Learning something specific—like playing music — indeed has many direct benefits. But hoping it will magically enhance unrelated skills such as emotion recognition is simply wishful thinking. It appears that other underlying factors like socioeconomic background better explain the observed correlations than the music training itself.
Educational enthusiasm around ‘magical far transfer’ remains high, but as we’ve said before, it’s probably wiser (and more scientifically accurate) to value learning activities for the specific skills and joys they provide, rather than overselling them as cognitive or emotional cure-alls.
Abstract of the study:
Music training is widely claimed to enhance nonmusical abilities, yet causal evidence remains inconclusive. Moreover, research tends to focus on cognitive over socioemotional outcomes. In two studies, we investigated whether music training improves emotion recognition in voices and faces among school-aged children. We also examined music-training effects on musical abilities, motor skills (fine and gross), broader socioemotional functioning, and cognitive abilities including nonverbal reasoning, executive functions, and auditory memory (short-term and working memory). Study 1 (N = 110) was a 2-year longitudinal intervention conducted in a naturalistic school setting, comparing music training to basketball training (active control) and no training (passive control). Music training improved fine-motor skills and auditory memory relative to controls, but it had no effect on emotion recognition or other cognitive and socioemotional abilities. Both music and basketball training improved gross-motor skills. Study 2 (N = 192) compared children without music training to peers attending a music school. Although music training correlated with better emotion recognition in speech prosody (tone of voice), this association disappeared after controlling for socioeconomic status, musical abilities, or short-term memory. In contrast, musical abilities correlated with emotion recognition in both prosody and faces, independently of training or other confounding variables. These findings suggest that music training enhances fine-motor skills and auditory memory, but it does not causally improve emotion recognition, other cognitive abilities, or socioemotional functioning. Observed advantages in emotion recognition likely stem from preexisting musical abilities and other confounding factors such as socioeconomic status.