Children of Note : Music Study Stimulates Preschoolers’ Minds, Study Finds

Shakespeare wrote about the “sweet power of music.”

Now scientists are finding that the bard was more correct than he could have possibly known.

A team of UC Irvine researchers Friday released results of a pilot study they said strongly indicates that music education stimulates the brains of preschool children to enhance learning.

“There are growing indications that music serves as nurturing stimulation to exercise the intellect,” said Norman Weinberger, a psychobiologist at UCI. “Such findings have important implications for the role of music in early learning and school curricula.”

At a conference of the National Assn. of Music Merchants, Weinberger and other UCI researchers presented the results of a nine-month study of 3-year-old children in two Southern California child-care centers. The names of the two centers were not made public, but one day-care center was in inner-city Long Beach and the other was a preschool in Costa Mesa.

The $35,000 study was partially funded by the Music Merchants group and partially by a grant from private donors.

Five children in each center took part in the experiment.

They were given a standard test for overall knowledge just before they began music learning: children at the Long Beach day-care center participated in group singing as their music education; youngsters in Costa Mesa learned to play electronic keyboards.

After music education began for the children, the researchers tested them again, at three-month intervals. The same type of test was used in all instances.

Frances H. Rauscher, a psychologist with UCI’s Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory, said the music training at both schools produced dramatic increases in the children’s test scores.

“They were (tested on) spatial abstract-reasoning skills,” Rauscher said. “The children were asked to assemble pieces of an object to create something they recognized. For instance, they would have pieces of cardboard that when correctly assembled showed the picture of a dog.”

The 3-year-old children could assemble abstract pieces into recognizable pictures much more quickly after they had started music training, Rauscher said. “Their skills with that particular task increased dramatically,” she said.

There was no control group in the pilot study, and therefore no comparison to children who did not have music training. But researchers said comparisons to standardized test results indicate the children in their study were learning at a “much faster” rate than the national norm.

Gordon L. Shaw, a UCI physicist who took part in the study, said scientists believe the brain has “certain natural patterns of firing activity that involves sequences.” Music learning probably enhances those natural patterns of the brain, he said.

Shaw and Rauscher said they will launch an expanded study this fall that will involve 50 children given music training, compared to a control group of 25 children not taking music instruction.

The theory that music education enhances brain development is an old one, dating back to the ancient Greeks. The UCI scientists in January, 1992, outlined their theories of about music’s connection to brain patterns during another conference of the music manufacturers.

The ongoing research linking brain development and music is of great interest to elementary and secondary education, said Fred Lange, director of curriculum and instructional programs for the Orange County Department of Education.

“Unfortunately music programs have been among those cut during budget reductions in recent years,” Lange noted. He added that research about music’s possible role in overall brain development may greatly encourage the return of music in the schools.

Rauscher said that she believes removing music training from schools is “a grave mistake.” She said, “Our research has the potential to move music to the core of the curriculum in all schools.”