C35 Music lessons and school results
alive Untested: no attacks yet · serves Q1 · last change 11 November 2026
Music lessons do not reliably raise children's school results or broad thinking-skill measures more than active non-music activities do; the one shown exception is inhibitory control (g = 0.60; Jamey et al. 2024).
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Where it holds
All limits (11)
Inside the circle: the core of the claim. Outside: every bound and carve-out in the claim file, numbered, with the attack that forced or added it where the record shows one.
forced by a narrowing attackin the original wordingwritten at creation, or added without a narrowing
Warm cards in the list were added by later attacks; plain cards were in the original draft or written at creation.
Children, music training compared with active non-music control activities; outcomes are school results (reading, maths, literacy, grades, standardised tests) and broad cognitive measures (IQ, general or composite reasoning, verbal or non-verbal ability, memory composites).
Written when the claim was created (5 November 2026); not forced by an attack
Not about a single executive function picked per study, and not about music skills themselves.
Written when the claim was created (5 November 2026); not forced by an attack
Created 2026-11-05 on Jonatan's decision after C30 was killed on its old kill line; every size below is carried over from C30's record.
Written when the claim was created (5 November 2026); not forced by an attack
Sala & Gobet 2020 (Memory & Cognition 48, DOI 10.3758/s13421-020-01060-2; full text): 54 studies, 254 effects; active controls g = 0.056 (95% CI −0.069 to 0.182), −0.021 in sensitivity analysis; no difference between cognitive and academic outcomes.
Written when the claim was created (5 November 2026); not forced by an attack
Bigand & Tillmann 2022 (Memory & Cognition 50(2), 339–347, DOI 10.3758/s13421-021-01226-6; published version): dropping 21 comparisons where the control trained the very skill tested left 51 studies (233 effects), g = 0.208 (95% CI 0.121 to 0.295), pooled over active and passive controls; without post-test-only studies 0.243 — the strongest challenge on file, but not an active-control-only estimate.
Written when the claim was created (5 November 2026); not forced by an attack
Román-Caballero, Vadillo, Trainor & Lupiáñez 2022 (Educational Research Review 35, 100436, DOI 10.1016/j.edurev.2022.100436; full text): instrumental programmes, 34 samples, 5,998 children, gΔ = 0.26 (0.12 to 0.39) overall; active controls 0.28 (−0.06 to 0.61) and randomised with active controls 0.23 (−0.13 to 0.58), both pooled over all outcome types (Table 2).
Written when the claim was created (5 November 2026); not forced by an attack
The paper gives no estimate for school results or broad cognitive measures against active controls alone: its literacy (0.20, 0.06 to 0.34), mathematics (0.23, −0.41 to 0.87) and intelligence (0.29, −0.00 to 0.58) figures pool active and passive controls (Table 3).
Added with attack #1 (corrected; it did not narrow the claim) · Román-Caballero, Vadillo, Trainor & Lupiáñez 2022 · 11 November 2026
Bias corrections: over randomised and non-randomised studies one correction (RVE PET) cut the estimate to 0.01; in randomised studies only, PET gave −0.04 (p = .881) and the selection model 0.15 (p = .207), while PEESE (0.18) and trim-and-fill (0.19 and 0.25) stayed near 0.2, and no test for publication bias was significant (Tables 4–5).
Added with attack #1 (corrected; it did not narrow the claim) · Román-Caballero, Vadillo, Trainor & Lupiáñez 2022 · 11 November 2026
Of the randomised studies with active controls, the authors cite the two with school-result outcomes (D'Souza & Wiseheart 2018; Haywood et al. 2015, 269 vs 279 pupils) as null results and two with intelligence outcomes (Schellenberg 2004; James et al. 2020) as positive (p. 2; Table 1).
Added with attack #1 (corrected; it did not narrow the claim) · Román-Caballero, Vadillo, Trainor & Lupiáñez 2022 · 11 November 2026
Outcomes measured at programme end only; no follow-up (corrected 2026-11-11).
Added with attack #1 (corrected; it did not narrow the claim) · Román-Caballero, Vadillo, Trainor & Lupiáñez 2022 · 11 November 2026
Exception: Jamey, Foster, Hyde & Dalla Bella 2024 (Cognition 252, 105913, DOI 10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105913; full text): 8 participant-randomised trials with active non-music controls, inhibition g = 0.60 (95% CI 0.39 to 0.82; I² = 0%); all 22 studies (1,734 children aged 3–11) g = 0.31; one measure per study picked by the authors, immediate post-tests, no blinding, and no academic or broad cognitive outcome.
Written when the claim was created (5 November 2026); not forced by an attack
0 of 11 bounds and carve-outs were forced by a specific attack.
How it changed
There is nothing to replay yet: C35 has not been attacked, and only one wording exists, the one it was given on 11 November 2026.
Music lessons do not reliably raise children's school results or broad thinking-skill measures more than active non-music activities do; the one shown exception is inhibitory control (g = 0.60; Jamey et al. 2024).
What would change this
What would kill it: A large randomised trial with an active non-music control group, or a meta-analysis of such trials, finds that music training raises children's school results or a broad cognitive measure (not a single executive function chosen per study) by about 0.2 standard deviations or more, with a confidence interval that excludes zero in the active-control comparisons themselves. Created 2026-11-05 as the narrower restatement of killed C30 (Jonatan chose this over keeping C30 with a rewritten kill line).
Attack record
No attacks yet. This claim is untested: its wording has not been exposed to counter-evidence in this project.
Corrections to our notes
These fix a number or a fact in our notes. They are not attacks and do not count toward the floor of 3 survivals.
- — C35's limits give Román-Caballero et al. 2022's active-control estimates without saying they pool all outcome types, and cite only the overall PET correction.
Details
What was checked: precision of the Román-Caballero et al. 2022 Bounds line; not a kill-condition test (the paper gives no estimate on school results or broad cognitive measures against active controls, and its pooled active-control estimates, 0.28 [−0.06, 0.61] and randomised 0.23 [−0.13, 0.58], have intervals that include zero, so the kill line is not met).
Why: Nightly-attacks 2026-11-11 Europe/Stockholm. Table 2 (p. 12): active controls gΔ = 0.28 [−0.06, 0.61], randomised with active controls 0.23 [−0.13, 0.58], outcome types pooled. Table 3 (p. 12), active and passive controls pooled: literacy 0.20 [0.06, 0.34] (m = 10), mathematics 0.23 [−0.41, 0.87] (m = 4), intelligence 0.29 [−0.00, 0.58] (m = 9, p = .052). Table 4 (p. 14): RVE PET over randomised and non-randomised studies 0.01 (p = .958). Table 5 (p. 15), randomised only: RVE PET −0.04 (p = .881); RVE PEESE 0.18 (p = .336); selection model 0.15 (p = .207; likelihood-ratio test χ²(1) = 1.08, p = .298); trim-and-fill L0 0.19 (p = .008), R0 0.25 (p = .002). Introduction (p. 2): D'Souza & Wiseheart 2018 and Haywood et al. 2015 cited as "null effects", Frischen et al. 2021, James et al. 2020 and Schellenberg 2004 as positive; Table 1 lists D'Souza & Wiseheart (randomised against the active control; outcomes include literacy and intelligence) and Haywood et al. (269 vs 279, randomised, active, literacy and mathematics) as randomised active-control studies with school-result outcomes, and James et al. 2020 (cluster-randomised) and Schellenberg 2004 (randomised) as active-control studies with intelligence outcomes. No follow-up after programme end. Supports C35's core; sharpens Bounds. Claim text, Status and kill-condition unchanged. Not a survival; does not count toward the floor; does not change C35's fruitless streak.
Evidence
6 linked sources: 2 supports, 2 limits, 2 challenges (first-pass draft, pending human review). supports: Sala & Gobet 2020, Sala & Gobet 2017 · limits: Román-Caballero et al. 2022, Jamey et al. 2024 · challenges: Bigand & Tillmann 2022, Schellenberg 2004