Syntes: Schellenberg (2004) — randomised music lessons and IQ

Källa: Schellenberg, E. G. (2004). Music Lessons Enhance IQ. Psychological Science 15(8), 511–514. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0956-7976.2004.00711.x

Verified content

• [abstract] 144 children randomly assigned to keyboard lessons, voice lessons, drama lessons or no lessons.
• [abstract] Music groups showed greater increases in full-scale IQ than the control groups (drama and no lessons together); the effect was "relatively small" but generalised across IQ subtests, index scores and a standardised academic achievement measure.
• [abstract] The drama group gained in adaptive social behaviour, which the music groups did not.
• [full text of Sala & Gobet 2017, Table 1] Sala & Gobet code the study as two samples, both age 6.0 and randomised, one with an active control and one without.

Limits

• [assessment] Abstract only; no effect size in the abstract. The comparison pools an active (drama) and a passive (no lessons) control. It is already inside the music meta-analyses C35 rests on (Sala & Gobet 2017 codes it), so it is not independent new evidence against them.

Why it is in the library

The classic randomised study usually cited against "music lessons do not raise broad thinking skills". C35 says music lessons do not reliably beat active non-music activities on school results or broad thinking skills; this RCT reports a small IQ and achievement gain over a drama control combined with a no-lesson control. Having it on file lets readers see the strongest single counter-study and how the meta-analyses treat it.

Added 2026-11-15 by the project (weekly source sweep, kind: old (classic); read: abstract). [abstract] = from the published abstract; [full text] = read in the full text; [assessment] = the project's own assessment.