DOI 10.1515/revneuro-2013-0023 Rev. Neurosci.

2013; 24(6): 665–675

Artur C. Jaschke*, Laura H.P. Eggermont, Henkjan Honing and Erik J.A. Scherder

Music education and its effect on intellectual

abilities in children: a systematic review
Abstract: Far transfer between music education and other Introduction
cognitive skills, such as academic achievement, has been
widely examined. However, the results of studies within
Academic understanding of the various facets of music as
similar cognitive domains are found to be inconclusive
a scientific discipline is increasing and their relationships
or contradictory. These differences can be traced back
with other cognitive skills is becoming clearer (Hurwitz
to the analytical methods used, differences in the forms
et al., 1975; Flohr, 1981). In this context, transfer from music
of music education studied and differences in neural
to other fields, such as cognition, is a hot topic of debate
activation during the processing of these tasks. In order
(Postman, 1971; Hurwitz et al., 1975; Flohr, 1981; Detterman,
to gain a better picture of the relationships involved, a
1993; Halpern, 1998; Bruer, 1999; Barnett and Ceci, 2002).
literature survey was performed in leading databases,
Transfer may be basically divided into near transfer and
such as PubMed/MedLine, psychINFO, ScienceDirect,
far transfer (Postman, 1971; Barnett and Ceci, 2002). Near
Embase, ERIC, ASSIA and Jstor from January 2001 to Janu-
transfer in the domain of music and musicianship relates
ary 2013. All studies included, concerned the far transfer
to fine motor control, the perception of pitch, rhythm,
from music education to other cognitive skills in children
timbre, melody, sound differentiation and creativity. Near
aged 4–13 years as compared with controls. These stud-
transfer is a fairly common phenomenon when students are
ies were independently selected and their quality was
learning to sing or play an instrument, since all the above-
assessed by two authors. This systematic review shows
mentioned skills are part of musicality in general (Ho et al.,
the need to address methodological and analytical ques-
2003; Koutsoupidou and Hargreaves, 2009). In contrast,
tions in greater detail. There is a general need to unify
far transfer effects include the effect of music education
methods used in music education research. Furthermore,
on academic achievement in such fields as mathematics
the hypothesis that intellectual skills, such as mathemat-
(Barnett and Ceci, 2002). Investigation of far transfer has
ics, reading, writing and intelligence can be divided into
so far left researchers with more questions than answers.
sub-functions, needs to be examined as one approach to
Studies over approximately the past 110 years have some-
the problems considered here. When this has been done,
times confirmed the existence of far transfer and sometimes
detailed analysis of cognitive transfer from music educa-
claimed to disprove it (Judd, 1908; Thorndike and Wood-
tion to other disciplines should become possible.
worth, 1901a,b,c; Halpern, 1998; Detterman, 1993). Barnett
and Ceci (2002) therefore listed what they saw as the basic
Keywords: academic achievement; cognitive domain; cog-
ingredients of far transfer, which they claimed were essen-
nitive functions; music intervention; music transfer.
tial for a proper understanding of such a complex phenom-
enon. They went on to state that far transfer constitutes the
*Corresponding author: Artur C. Jaschke, Department of ability to use an ability learned in one domain and apply it
Clinical Neuropsychology, VU University Amsterdam, NL-1081 BT in another unrelated domain, relying on the “[…] domain
Amsterdam, The Netherlands, e-mail: [email protected] in question [… and the] underlying cognitive skill involved
Laura H.P. Eggermont and Erik J.A. Scherder: Department of
in encoding, representing, retrieving, mapping, and trans-
Clinical Neuropsychology, VU University Amsterdam, NL-1081 BT
Amsterdam, The Netherlands ferring prior learning” (Barnett and Ceci, 2002: p. 633). In
Henkjan Honing: Department of Musicology, the institute for Logic, line with this, several researchers have argued that singing
Language and Computation and the Cognitive Science Center or playing music has the potential to enhance cognitive
Amsterdam, University of Amsterdam, NL 1098 XH Amsterdam, functions, such as intelligence (Degé and Kubicek, 2011a),
The Netherlands
mathematical skills (Vaughn, 2000; Hodges and O’Connell
2009), spatial reasoning (Bilhartz et al., 2000; Hetland and
Winner, 2004), writing (Anvari et al., 2002), reading (Stand-
ley, 2008; Beson et al., 2011; Corrigal and Trainor, 2011)
and memory (Chan et al., 1998; Ho et al., 2003). However,

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666 A.C. Jaschke et al.: Music and far transfer

the results obtained by different authors are inconsistent. general. The contradiction between these elegant findings
It has been suggested that these inconsistencies might be shows the importance of unified methods and a firm grasp
cleared up, if studies use the same or very similar methods of the concept of far transfer in general in understanding
(Pietschnig et al., 2010). It has further been hypothesized the effects of music education on other cognitive and intel-
that poor understanding of the neural functions associated lectual abilities.
with far transfer, together with the complexity of far trans- The present review therefore aims to reflect the vari-
fer as such, might also help to explain these inconsistencies ation in published results in the field of music education
(Barnett and Ceci, 2002). This approach has, however, not and the far transfer effect and to show how difficult it is
yet been applied consistently (Gromko, 2005; Norton et al., to interpret these results when different methods are used
2005; Forgeard et al., 2008; Moreno et al., 2011a,b). Further- to measure them and their discussion is hampered by the
more, it is not enough to consider far transfer from art or absence of a proper classification of far transfer and the
music in general (Gromko, 2005; Southgate and Roscigno, lack of a structured understanding of music and musicality.
2009; Moreno et al., 2011a): a distinction should be drawn
between active and passive perception of music (Hodges
and O’Connell, 2009; Kraus and Chandrasekaran, 2010),
or between listening (Rauscher and Shaw, 1998), playing,
Methods
or singing (Vaughn, 2000). Moreover, cognitive functions
are often measured with a focus on different skills within a Systematic review
test battery, such as spatial reasoning and verbal abilities,
True meta-analysis of far transfer from music education to other
which are addressed by different sub-tests in the overall
cognitive domains is impossible, due to the lack of an adequate
measurement of an intelligence quotient. Even though structured classification of music and musicality and a lack of under-
we know today that just listening to music will not make standing of the neuropsychological effects underlying far transfer.
us more intelligent (Črnčec et al., 2006b; Pietschnig et al., We did, nevertheless, carry out a systematic review of the literature;
2010) by what has come to be known as the Mozart effect overviews of our findings are given in Figures 1–5.
proposed by Rauscher et al. (1993, 1997, 1998), Hetland and
Winner (2004) found spatial reasoning and verbal abili-
ties to be improved. By contrast, Pietschnig et al. (2010) Studies included and quality assessment
showed, by means of a thorough meta-analysis, that no The studies included are shown in Table 1. Their quality was assessed
convincing evidence could be found for far transfer from with the aid of a newly developed assessment scale, based on the
music to spatial reasoning, or for the Mozart effect in Newcastle-Ottawa Assessment Scale for meta analyses, used in

Reading

Study name / transfer to Statistics for each study Odds ratio and 95% CI
Odds Lower Upper Relative
ratio limit limit Z-value p-value weight
Register (2001)a 10.052 3.337 30.275 4.102 0.000 5.05
Register (2001)b 179.419 42.925 749.939 7.112 0.000 3.00
Tsang and Conrad (2011)a 0.261 0.105 0.650 -2.887 0.004 7.40
Tsang and Conrad (2011)c 0.850 0.352 2.058 -0.359 0.719 7.87
Tsang and Conrad (2011)b 0.670 0.276 1.623 -0.888 0.375 7.83
Degé and Schwarzer (2011)a 2.319 0.594 9.049 1.211 0.226 3.31
Gromko (2005)d 1.238 0.608 2.520 0.588 0.556 12.15
Gromko (2005)e 3.579 1.722 7.437 3.417 0.001 11.48
Gromko (2005)f 1.860 0.909 3.803 1.700 0.089 12.00
Piro and Ortitz (2009)c 7.324 3.441 15.586 5.167 0.000 10.77
Piro and Ortitz (2009)g 16.970 7.597 37.907 6.905 0.000 9.51
Jentschke, Koelsch and Friederici (2005)c 0.532 0.174 1.629 -1.105 0.269 4.90
Rickard, Bambrick and Gill (2012)c 88.906 28.419 278.140 7.712 0.000 4.72
0.01 0.1 1 10 100

- +
Meta analysis

Figure 1 Study analysis with subdivisions covering: aphonological awareness, bword decoding and identification, cvocabulary, dletter,
e
segment, fnonsense, gverbal sequencing.

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 A.C. Jaschke et al.: Music and far transfer 667

Writing

Study name / transfer to Statistics for each study Odds ratio and 95% CI

Odds Lower Upper Relative

ratio limit limit Z-Value p-Value weight

Register (2001)a 5.223 1.816 15.022 3.067 0.002 40.72

Rickard, Bambrick and Gill (2012)a 0.378 0.158 0.908 -2.176 0.030 59.28

0.01 0.1 1 10 100

- +

Meta analysis

Figure 2 Study analysis with subdivision covering: alogo identification.

Language NOS (not otherwise specified)

Study name / transfer to Statistics for each study Odds ratio and 95% CI

Odds Lower Upper Relative

ratio limit limit Z-value p-value weight

Costa-Giomi (2004) 0.013 0.006 0.031 -9.840 0.000 100.00

0.01 0.1 1 10 100

- +

Meta analysis

Figure 3 Study analysis with subdivision covering: language NOS expression.

Mathematics

Study name / transfer to Statistics for each study Odds ratio and 95% CI

Odds Lower Upper Relative

ratio limit limit Z-value p-value weight

Rickard, Bambrick and Gill (2012)a 9.429 3.690 24.097 4.687 0.000 26.74
Courey et al. (2012)b 2.229 0.921 5.394 1.777 0.076 30.13
Costa -Giomi (2004)c 0.074 0.035 0.155 -6.900 0.000 43.14

0.01 0.1 1 10 100

- +
Meta analysis

Figure 4 Study analysis with subdivision covering: ageneral skills, bfraction calculation, cmathematical computation.

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668 A.C. Jaschke et al.: Music and far transfer

IQ

Study name / transfer to Statistics for each study Odds ratio and 95% CI

Odds Lower Upper Relative

ratio limit limit Z-value p-value weight

Portowitz et al. (2009)a 4.032 1.770 9.186 3.319 0.001 25.44

Ho, Cheung and Chan (2003)b 0.552 0.260 1.174 -1.544 0.123 30.30
Schellenberg (2004)b 3.675 1.489 9.068 2.824 0.005 21.14
Rickard, Bambrick and Gill (2012)b 1.801 0.759 4.272 1.335 0.182 23.12

0.01 0.1 1 10 100

- +
Meta analysis

Figure 5 Study analysis with subdivisions covering: aRaven’s standard matrices, bgeneral (non-specified) IQ.

Cochrane reviews (Wells et al., 2011) by two individual research- the influence of music on transfer outcomes. Although we divided
ers (A.C.J. and L.H.P.E.). The clinical music study assessment scale transfer outcomes into the above-mentioned five main groups, we
(Musiquas) was developed by the authors, as no assessment scale observed an overlap in the investigation of outcomes within the
focusing on music-related studies was already available. This scale studies included; some studies investigated more than one direct
assesses the quality of studies to be included in meta-analyses with outcome, for example mathematics and intelligence, while others
regard to 27 aspects divided over four main groups: selection, control analyzed a whole range of outcomes from mathematics to reading
criteria, exposure and outcome. Musiquas was fine-tuned to permit within the same experimental set-up.
assessment of the strength of the music studies included in meta- As we are mainly interested in far transfer, we did not differen-
analyses and systematic reviews, to detect possible methodological tiate between different forms of music education or participation.
flaws. Full details of Musiquas are given elsewhere (http://www. Although we are aware that there are various forms of music educa-
academia.edu/2521568/Clinical_music_study_quality_assessment_ tion and that the different forms may have different effects on trans-
scale_MUSIQUAS_1st_Edition_). fer outcomes, this subdivision would have exceeded the scope of the
present review; it may be considered in future research as mentioned
in the discussion.

Time frame
For the purpose of this review, we limited our search to studies pub-
lished between January 2001 and January 2013. Two authors (A.C.J.
Age of pupils and form of music participation
and L.H.P.E.) independently inspected titles and abstracts for com- We focused our analysis on studies, which used randomized con-
pliance with the defined inclusion criteria. Studies before 2001 had trolled trials (RCTs). As there are not many RCT studies, we also
been covered by meta-analyses by Hetland and Winner (2004) and included studies that made use of a control group and longitudinal
Pietschnig et al. (2010) and were therefore excluded from our review studies, which we define as studies having more than three (T0–T2)
to avoid publication bias. test moments and/or a length of more than 12 months. To merit
Any disagreement was resolved through discussion and/or con- inclusion into our analysis, studies had to consider pupils who were
sultation with another independent researcher. between 4 and 13 years old who played a musical instrument and/or
sang, and who were usually exposed to music in general, listening
to it and learning music theory to help them play an instrument. We
have not based our inclusion criteria on length of music education,
Classification as again there is a lack of a consensus among researchers on this
point.
Our search for studies to be included in the systematic review
revealed five main categories of transfer outcomes from music: read-
ing, spatial reasoning, writing, mathematics and intelligence. We
computed individual statistical values for each category. Where cer- Exclusion criteria
tain studies introduced subdivisions of skills within a given cognitive
function, such as mathematics, we incorporated these subdivisions Studies were excluded when effects were measured on the basis
in our analysis and calculated individual effect sizes rather than one of study sizes rather than sample sizes, when there was no control
overall effect. For example, reading was divided into phonological group, when we were aware that studies based on the same experi-
awareness, vocabulary, word decoding and identification and ver- mental population were published in more than one journal or at dif-
bal sequencing. This enabled us to draw a more precise picture of ferent times (leading to the exclusion of spatial reasoning studies),

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 A.C. Jaschke et al.: Music and far transfer 669

when they analyzed near transfer, when they were meta-analyses or

International Journal of Music Education

Journal of Research in Music Education
longitudinal studies lasting < 12 months.

Research Studies in Music Education

Databases and journals

Journal of Music Therapy

Frontiers in Psychology

Psychological Science
Psychology of Music
Psychology of Music

Neuropsychology The online databases PubMed/MedLine, psychINFO, ScienceDirect,

Music Perception

Springer Science
Embase, ERIC, ASSIA and Jstor were searched in five main rounds,
covering: (1) music, transfer, education, (2) music education, transfer

NeuroImage
effect, (3) effects of music on education, on transfer, on mathematics,
on reading, on writing, on IQ, on memory, (4) music, near transfer,
Outlet

far transfer and (5) music, academic achievement. These main search
activities were repeated, adding longitudinal and longitudinal study
study design
8–12 Longitudinal

design to the above-mentioned search terms. Where necessary, the

search terms were attuned to the requirements of the databases

Study
Study
Study
Study
7–9 Study

Study
Study
Study
Study
5–13 Study
6–8 Study
5–6 Study

searched. We further consolidated and expanded our investigation

Age Type

by using the following MeSH terms: music, transfer and education.

10–13 In addition to the above databases, online editions of Music Psychol-
8–11
10–13
6
4–5
10–12
4–6
5–9

ogy, the British Journal of Music Education and the Journal of Experi-
mental Child Psychology were manually examined using the above
search and MeSH terms.
Formal instrumental training

General music involvement

General music involvement
Playing and general music

Finally, an extensive manual search of printed editions of the

Journal of Music Education, Music Perception, Musicae Scientiae and
Singing and playing
Playing and singing
Music intervention

the Journal of Research in Music Education was conducted.

Authors were contacted personally where necessary, to obtain
Mathematics, (near transfer) Music theory

missing information needed to complete the statistical analysis.

involvement
Playing (p)
Playing (p)

Playing
Playing
Playing
Playing

Data analyses
mathematical computation
√ Language expression and
√ Phonological awareness

Values of the mean (M) and standard deviation (SD) of the effects
Reading, (near transfer)

Mathematics, reading

studied in conjunction with sample sizes of the experimental and

control groups were used to gain an insight into the effects described.
Reading, writing

We also used odds ratios (OR) to estimate the likelihood of the occur-
rence of a given effect of music on the individual outcomes. Here
N (R)CT Transfer to

IQ, writing
Reading
Reading
√ Reading

too, we did not pool the results into one overall effect size, in order
to avoid sample size bias and generalization. Nevertheless, we did
IQ
√ IQ
√ IQ

use standardized mean differences (SMDs), to combine different test

√
√
√
√
√
√
√
√

results concerning the same outcome.

31
rating instruction control

20
30
37
60
43
34
25
45
57
36
14
54

Results
Table 1 Included studies and quality assessment scores.

38
21
37
47
43
26
32
25
45
46
45
N

14
63

The search yielded 217 articles, of which 61 were consid-

ered as possibly relevant. Twelve studies met all inclusion
criteria (see Figure 6 for study flow diagram). Although
7
Musiquas

6
7
8
5
5
6

4
7
8
7
8
8

one review and two meta-analyses have been published

in our inclusion timeframe (Hetland and Winner, 2004;
Standley, 2008; Pietschnig et al., 2010) only the review
Degé and Schwarzer (2005)

by Hetland and Winner (2004) gave an overall insight

Tsang and Conrad (2011)
Study (publication date)

Jentschke et al. (2005)

Portowitz et al. (2009)

into music education and the near and far transfer effect,
Piro and Oritz (2009)

Schellenberg (2004)

Rickard et al. (2012)

Courey et al. (2012)
Costa-Giomi (2004)

while Pietschnig et al. (2010) focused on the Mozart

Register (2001)
Ho et al. (2003)

Gromko (2005)

effect, therefore analyzing the effect sizes based on such

categories as ‘overall’ mathematics or ‘overall’ reading
abilities, not considering the complexity of far transfer as
here hypothesized. Our inclusion of longitudinal studies

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670 A.C. Jaschke et al.: Music and far transfer

concerning measures of phonological awareness (­Register,

Records identified through search
n=264
Duplicates removed
n=47
2001; Tsang and Conrad, 2011; Degé and Schwarzer, 2011b).
The results range from 0.261, p < 0.005 to 10.052, p < 0.001
yielding both a negative and a positive effect.

Records screened by title and abstract

n=217
Records excluded
n=156 Writing

Studies analyzing writing skills yielded contradictory

findings. Rickard et al. (2012) have shown a clear nega-
tive effect of music on writing, with an OR of 0.378, p = 0.03
Full-text articles assessed for eligibility Full-text articles excluded
n=61 [not: (R)CT, age group, study, favoring the non-music intervention group (see Figure 2).
methodologically flawed, Register’s (2001) data, by contrast, demonstrated a mark-
longitudinal design shorter
than 12 months] edly positive effect with a confidence interval of p < 0.01.
n=49
The logo identification sub-group was included in both
studies, but was more thoroughly analyzed by Rickard
et al. (2012).

Included studies
n=12 Language not otherwise specified (NOS)

Figure 6 Study flow diagram. Costa-Giomi’s (2004) findings yielded a negative effect on
language expression with p < 0.001. However, there is no
comparable study and the language domain is not further
yielded five additional studies that were considered rel- specified.
evant at first sight. On closer investigation, however, four
of these studies had to be excluded as: (1) they only con-
sidered the effect of music on brain development without Mathematics
taking academic achievement into account, or did not
measure the effect of music on academic achievement The analysis of the transfer from music to mathematical
directly (Scales et al., 2006; Hyde et al., 2009), (2) the skills appears to be the most controversial of all of the
age group was outside our inclusion frame (Gruhn, 2002) fields considered here.
and (3) the longitudinal study lasted < 12 months (Chobert The difficulty of analyzing transfer from music to
et al., 2012). Hence, only one longitudinal study (Costa- mathematics is similar to that where reading is involved,
Giomi, 2004) met our inclusion criteria and was included as both target domains have to be divided into sub-group-
with the other 12 for further analysis. ings (Figure 4). Only three studies met our inclusion cri-
teria. While Rickard et al. (2012) and Courey et al. (2012)
show a significant positive effect of music on mathemati-
Reading cal skills (with p = 0.076), Costa-Giomi (2004) showed
a negative effect on mathematical computation skills
Figure 1 shows the OR for studies that mentioned the effect (p < 0.001). These differences in results can possibly be
of music education on reading. OR were chosen to indicate attributed to the use of different study designs as well as
the likelihood of a positive or negative outcome. The forest differences in the tests administered. Furthermore, each
plot shows that most of the studies favor the music inter- study analyzes a different subdivision of mathematics,
vention groups (‘+’). Studies by Tsang and Conrad (2011), which may be another reason for the differences observed.
Piro and Ortiz (2009), Jentschke et al. (2005) and Rickard
et al. (2012) represent the effects on vocabulary in reading.
The positive likelihood is close to 0 with p < 0.05, while the IQ
negative likelihood of the effect of music on vocabulary
in reading is represented by an OR of 0.532 with a prob- The positive effect of music on IQ has been shown in a
ability of p = 0.279. A comparable observation can be made vast number of publications. Even though different

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 A.C. Jaschke et al.: Music and far transfer 671

test batteries were administered, the results still tend The studies dealing with mathematics, writing and reading
to produce positive effects. Of the four studies meeting yielded surprising results. Rickard et al. (2012) and Courey
our selection criteria, only one (Ho et al., 2003) failed to et al. (2012) analyzed mathematical skills in general and
show a positive effect. The negative effects reported in the calculation of fractions in particular, and found a posi-
this publication may be due to the type of music interven- tive transfer effect, while Costa-Giomi (2004) found a nega-
tion involved (general arts involvement, listening, playing tive effect. Studies researching reading and writing have
and/or singing) (Figure 5). By contrast, the study by shown both negative and positive far transfer outcomes.
­Schellenberg (2004) showed a positive effect of music on The longitudinal study on (NOS) language expression
IQ with p = 0.005 according to the meta-analysis. Further- has yielded a negative result. Since, however, there was
more, this investigation revealed no significant difference no other study to compare it with, this only adds to the
between results obtained using general IQ measurements mystery surrounding far transfer effects.
and for example, Raven’s standard matrices, general non- These results show that subdivision of a cognitive
specific IQ measurements, or the Wechsler Intelligence function can strongly influence the likelihood of finding
Scale for Children 3rd edition (WISC III). transfer to one function from an activity such as music
education.

Discussion
Music education, far transfer and neurocog-
Music and far transfer nitive function

‘The mind is so specialized into a multitude of independent

‘Estimation of a single effect size for far transfer is misguided in
capacities that we alter human nature only in small spots, and
view of this complexity’ (Barnett and Ceci, 2002: p. 612).
any special school training has a much narrower influence upon
the mind […] than has commonly been supposed’ (Thorndike,
Music education requires growing justification 1906, pp. 246–247).
amongst policy makers (Branscome, 2012). Adding to this
pressure, the far transfer effect remains an unresolved Music-making (singing or playing an instrument),
mystery in the realm of music education. Our review, activates a vast number of different cerebral regions
however, sheds light on the possible cause of this mystery, (Schlaug et al., 1995, 2005; Kraus and Chandrasekaran,
by investigating the need to use more unified methods 2010; Strait et al., 2011; Kraus et al., 2012). The overlap in
when analyzing music and far transfer, to move away the cerebral areas involved in the execution of musical and
from the use of umbrella terms and further investigate the non-musical tasks means that it is tempting to group them
neural correlates underlying such transfer effects. In fact, under certain umbrella terms; but as shown in the present
there are many studies analyzing far transfer from music to review that might be the wrong approach. Intellectual
intelligence. Most of these studies did not meet our inclu- abilities, such as intelligence, mathematics, writing and
sion criteria, however. Of the ones that do, that by Ho et al. reading should all be further subdivided. For example,
(2003) failed to show a positive transfer effect while that by mathematics may be divided as mentioned above into
Schellenberg (2004) did show a positive transfer effect with general skills, basic concepts, operations and applica-
two different measures of intelligence: Raven’s standard tions, where each of these functions activates additional/
matrices and general (aspecific) intelligence. Here, the two different cerebral areas. These areas are not necessarily
different results can be attributed to a lack of uniformity in active during the execution of the other skills, even though
the test methods used. While both studies analyze intel- they also fall under the term mathematics (­Campbell,
ligence, Schellenberg (2004) uses an aspecific measure of 1992). It is then likely that an analysis of general skills
intelligence, which may have a stronger effect sensitivity in will show a positive transfer from music, while a study of
this case and is thus more liable to yield a positive effect. specific operations or applications may not. The key ques-
However, Schellenberg’s study is known to be problem- tion here is to what extent far transfer can be confirmed or
atic, because the non-music drama intervention group was denied on the basis of a study of overall skills. As argued
merged with the no-intervention control group before com- by Barnett and Ceci (2002), processing models of far trans-
parison with the music groups. A direct comparison of the fer account for differences in the individual processes of
drama group with the music group would very likely not domain-related cognitive skills; this supports the idea of
have resulted in any significant difference in intelligence. dividing academic skills into their consecutive building

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672 A.C. Jaschke et al.: Music and far transfer

blocks, such as application, operation and execution in psychology. This review has shown that a lack of uniform
mathematics. The present review has hypothesized that research methods in the study of far transfer from music
far transfer can only be reliably demonstrated when these education makes it difficult to achieve consistent results
subdivisions, both in the execution of cognitive skills and that can be reliably incorporated into the growing body of
in the analysis of the sub domain of far transfer as pro- knowledge. Research should aim, in future, at more lon-
posed by Barnett and Ceci (2002), are taken into account gitudinal studies producing more reliable results, through
and analyzed individually. a thorough testing regime, a consistent research proto-
In addition to this subdivision of the skills domains col and the long-term research design itself. Direct inter-
studied and the use of uniform methods to study them, action between practice (music education in this case)
the form of educational music intervention: (1) general and research will enable researchers to achieve this goal.
music education versus a more specific approach, (2) indi- More specifically, use of longitudinal RCTs extending over
vidual tuition versus group or classroom tuition and (3) at least 3 school years, with a significant number of test
the sub-groupings, we propose, is thus important in gen- moments from baseline measurement, paired with a multi-
erating homogeneous test results. The length of interven- disciplinary understanding, will set the tune for the devel-
tion should also be taken into consideration, as this may opment of a stronger and more unified research method for
be a strong indicator of an effect or the lack thereof. As music education, far transfer and music cognition studies.
most studies have only involved music educational inter- We therefore argue that the studies considered here yield
ventions lasting less than a year, we have not included the heterogeneous results, mainly due to the use of umbrella
length of the intervention as a parameter in this review terms. As explained above, we believe that this issue can be
(Bilhartz et al., 2000; Anvari et al., 2002; Ho et al., 2003; resolved through analysis of sub-groups in the realm of cog-
Hetland and Winner, 2004; Standley, 2008; Hodges and nitive execution of the tasks proposed, as well as a detailed
O’Connell, 2009; Degé and Kubicek, 2011a). However, we subdivision of far transfer as such. In addition, there is the
suggest that the intervention should last at least a year need for a uniform methodological approach to the analy-
to be able to show clear results. Although the articles we sis of transfer from music to other non-musical abilities.
reviewed made a first attempt to analyze these relation- We are confident that this alternative perspective will
ships, they lack more detailed consideration of sub-group- provide a basis for more powerful, reliable and accurate
ings in the non-music skills acquired and fail to study the study of far transfer from music to a variety of cognitive
effect of a variety of music education approaches using skills.
uniform methods and interventions of varying duration.
The line of attack we propose can lead to a deeper insight Acknowledgment: The authors would like to express their
into the nature of music and far transfer and should there- hearty thanks to the members of the Netwerk Muziekdo-
fore be considered in future research. centen PABO (Network of the Music Teachers at Dutch
Primary Teachers’ Training Colleges) for their active par-
ticipation, without which this study would not have been
The future directions, of the study of far
possible.
transfer from music education

Consistent, thorough investigative methods are key in Received July 8, 2013; accepted September 16, 2013; previously
achieving better support for future studies in experimental published online October 30, 2013

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Artur C. Jaschke has obtained his Bachelor degree in Music (Double

Bass and Drums) at Dartington College of Arts (United Kingdom) Laura Eggermont’s research focuses on cognition, pain and
and Music and Music Cognition at the University of Otago (New mobility in older adults with or without cognitive impairment. She
Zealand). During this period he developed a strong interest in the finished her thesis concerning ‘Neurorehabilitation in dementia’ in
neurology of music, which led him to complete his Master’s degree 2007. She worked as a post-doc in Boston and currently works as an
at the Universiteit van Amsterdam (The Netherlands), in Musicology assistant professor at the VU University in Amsterdam.
and Music Cognition (thesis title: Controlled Freedom: Cognitive
Economy versus Hierarchical Organisation in jazz improvisation).
Currently he is researcher clinical Neuromusicology at the VU Uni-
versity Amsterdam (The Netherlands) in the department of Clinical
Neuropsychology, specializing in the interrelation of music, execu-
tive functions and neural development in clinical and non clinical
populations.

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Henkjan Honing (1959) holds a KNAW-Hendrik Muller chair in Music

Cognition and is professor of Cognitive and Computational Musicol- Erik Scherder is head of the department clinical Neuropsychology
ogy at both the Faculty of Humanities and the Faculty of Science of and full professor at the VU University Amsterdam (the Nether-
the University of Amsterdam (UvA). He conducts his research under lands). Furthermore he is full professor for Human Movement
the auspices of the Institute for Logic, Language and Computa- Sciences at the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen (the Netherlands). Cur-
tion (ILLC), and the University of Amsterdam’s Brain and Cognition rently, he is conducting research on pain experience in people with
(ABC) center. Henkjan Honing is the Distinguished Lorentz Fellow neurodegenerative diseases.
2013/14, a prize granted by the Lorentz Center for the Sciences and
the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study.

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