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Re: [AUDITORY] Papers on lack of effect of musical training




I agree with Sam, Ian and others that the cognitive benefits of music tend to be overestimated, often for non-scientific reasons. Similar effects can be seen in the literature on benefits for health care. I have been critical in the public debate about these ’shouting ourselves in the foot claims' (mostly in Dutch, e.g. [1]). 

Nevertheless, I believe that showing that music matters, is a good thing, while being appreciative of individual differences (btw fundamental to a phenomics and genetics of musicality [2]) and differences across cultures and societies [3]. Music is not just culture, and it is also not just biology.

Henkjan

[3] https://doi.org/10.1525/mp.2020.37.3.185

On 15 Aug 2020, at 12:35, Samuel Mehr <sam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Hi AUDITORY, not that anyone asked, but I agree with Ian, and wrote to that effect in this Times op-ed https://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/22/opinion/sunday/music-and-success.html
But even if future studies fail to support the existence of music’s cognitive benefits, this should not deter parents from providing their children with music lessons. Our findings in no way diminish the intrinsic value of music education, which is so obvious that it needs no validation from empirical study. We’ve made literature, history, mathematics and science core elements of education. Why should music — a human activity older than the written word — be any different? 
My colleagues and I urge parents, teachers, school administrators and policy makers to make music education a part of children’s lives for the musical skills it imparts, the cultural knowledge it conveys and, above all, the joy it brings. As Aristotle wrote, music “makes the hearts of men glad: so that on this ground alone we may assume that the young ought to be trained in it.”

--
Samuel Mehr
Department of Psychology
Harvard University
Be a citizen scientist at themusiclab.org!


On Sat, Aug 15, 2020 at 6:18 AM Ian Cross <ic108@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

To play devil's advocate here, I'm not sure that the question of whether or not musical training has effects beyond music in is worth asking, other than in the political attempt to counter the philistinism of a utilitarian capitalism that discounts any investment in activities that are not obviously of immediate economic value. One of the persistent problems with research into phenomena such as "effects of musical training" or "genetics of musicality" is a failure to recognise the culture-specificity of the concepts "musical training" and "musicality".  Even in what might be construed as the fairly homogeneous musical culture of contemporary Europe, different skills are accorded different degrees of importance in different national music-educational traditions.  "Musicality" across Europe is something of a Frankenstein concept — and once one moves beyond Europe the diversity of what might count as "musicality" only increases.  Hence one would expect to find quite different answers to the question that are highly dependent on cultural context — even if one could identify what one intends by the term "music" in the first place.

 

Best,

Ian Cross

On 15/08/2020 07:57, Colette McKAY wrote:
note that papers comparing musicians and non-musicians in cross-sectional studies cannot separate effects of music training and innate (genetic based) characteristics.
Similarly, in those studies, correlations of effects with amount of music training or engagement in training cannot separate effects of training and innate characteristics.

Longitudinal training studies with careful control of expectation bias and innate characteristics are the only valid way to see if the training itself is being transferred to other cognitive or sensory domains. Unfortunately most of those studies have low quality research designs and the chance of finding an effect of music training is positively correlated with poor design (inappropriate or no control, no randomisation, wrong statistics). e.g. Sala, G., & Gobet, F. (2020). Cognitive and academic benefits of music training with children: A multilevel meta-analysis. Mem Cognit. doi:10.3758/s13421-020-01060-2  found null effect of music training on cognitive outcomes when the correlation of effect size with quality of research design was partialled out of the analysis.

There is also a growing literature of genetic studies and twin studies that highlight the genetic differences between people with musical aptitude or not. This link is largely ignored in "music  training" studies

best,
Colette McKay

.
University of Amsterdam
Faculty of Humanities 
Faculty of Science
 
Prof. dr Henkjan Honing
Professor of Music Cognition
 
Academic: www.mcg.uva.nl  
.