Home · C35
C35 alive
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).
- Status
- alive
- Last change
- 2026-11-11
- Serves
- Q1 (How do humans actually learn, and what helps them learn best?)
- Ages
- foralder-tidig-barndom, grundskola-lag
- Area
- Music and arts training
- Relates to
- C30 relates-to C35 (C30 is the killed broader version); C29 relates-to C35 (training one skill does not lift unrelated school results)
- Bounds
- 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). Not about a single executive function picked per study, and not about music skills themselves. 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. 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. 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. 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). 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). 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). 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). Outcomes measured at programme end only; no follow-up (corrected 2026-11-11). 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.
- What would kill this
- 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).
- Tutor consequence
- none yet
Attack record
No attacks yet
No attack is counted against this claim yet.
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.
Linked sources
6 linked sources (2 supports, 2 limits, 2 challenges)
Supports (2)
| Source | Basis |
|---|---|
| EXP-013 · When the music's over. Does music skill transfer to children's and young adolescents' cognitive and academic skills? A meta-analysis (2017) | Full text: 38 studies, 118 effect sizes, 3,085 children and young adolescents; overall d = 0.16; against active controls d = 0.03 (CI −0.07 to 0.12, k = 54); randomised with active controls about zero (k = 22, p = .113); larger effects only in non-randomised, passive-control studies (d = 0.33). Same authors and overlapping studies as Sala & Gobet 2020 (EXP-007), so not independent support. |
| EXP-007 · Cognitive and academic benefits of music training with children: A multilevel meta-analysis (2020) | Full text: active controls g = 0.056 ns; carried over from C30. |
Limits (2)
| Source | Basis |
|---|---|
| EXP-011 · Does music training improve inhibition control in children? A systematic review and meta-analysis (2024) | Inhibitory control g = 0.60 in 8 active-controlled RCTs: the named exception; killed C30. |
| EXP-010 · Please don't stop the music: A meta-analysis of the cognitive and academic benefits of instrumental musical training in childhood and adolescence (2022) | Active controls 0.28 (95% CI −0.06 to 0.61), all outcomes pooled; no school-results or broad-cognitive estimate against active controls; in randomised studies, bias corrections give −0.04 to 0.26. Full text checked 2026-11-11; carried over from C30. |
Challenges (2)
| Source | Basis |
|---|---|
| EXP-008 · Near and far transfer: Is music special? (2022 (online 2021)) | g = 0.208 after removing near-transfer controls, pooled with passive controls; carried over from C30. |
| EXP-012 · Music Lessons Enhance IQ (2004) | Abstract: 144 children randomised to keyboard, voice, drama or no lessons; the music groups gained more full-scale IQ than the controls (drama and no lessons together), "relatively small" but generalising to subtests, index scores and a standardised academic achievement measure. No effect size in the abstract; the control groups are pooled, so the drama-only (active) comparison is not separated. Already included in Sala & Gobet 2017 and later metas. Closed. |
Review state: first-pass draft, pending human review.