4 ms·

I dislike the sensationalization in the article ("Put down the banjo, Timmy"). The headline makes it sound like learning music is about as useless as sitting on

by lhorie 6y ago

I dislike the sensationalization in the article ("Put down the banjo, Timmy"). The headline makes it sound like learning music is about as useless as sitting on your couch, as far as intelligence goes. But it goes on to say that the study talks about looking at a wide range of studies and stating that quality studies compare music learning with control groups that do other types of activities, like sports. You don't really need a PhD in psychology to figure out that any activity that involves putting effort over long periods of time will yield _some_ sort of result. Whether that actually translates directly to hyper-specific measurements (e.g. school math grades) as opposed to only "soft" long-term changes in behavior (e.g. developing an interest in the relationship between music and math, leading to e.g. an interest in software engineering over medicine, or an increased interest in arts, or whatever) seems to me like asking the wrong question. Both music and intelligence are incredibly multidimensional. Trying to narrowly define a supposed correlation between two very narrow aspects of both might be a disservice to the idea of the development of a well rounded individual. I feel that many people take these sorts of soundbite titles to heart as if they were little life hacks to "get ahead", rather than thinking about life as a holistic experience.

deleted 6y ago
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Farow 6y ago
> The headline makes it sound like learning music is about as useless as sitting on your couch, as far as intelligence goes. Isn't that kind of what the study says though? It specifically concludes: > Moreover, recent correlational studies have confirmed that music engagement is not associated with domain-general cognitive skills or academic performance. What I understand from this study is that whether you learn music or sit on your couch will have no difference on your cognitive abilities and only make you better at music if you do the former. The study also mentions that you can't transfer skills to different domains. I think this further reinforces their conclusion. > While human cognition has been shown to be malleable to training, transfer of skills appears to be limited to the training domain and, at best, other similar domains. [...] Near transfer – i.e., the transfer of skills within the same domain – is sometimes observed, far transfer – i.e., the transfer of skills across two distant domains – is rare or possibly inexistent. While music can have positive effects, those would be mostly limited your general well-being, will not make you smarter and can be achieved through other activities as well. > Music may be beneficial for non-cognitive constructs in children such as prosocial behavior and self-esteem. These possible advantages are not likely to be specific to music, though. In fact, any enticing and empowering activity may improve children’s well-being.
- sriku 6y ago
  From a neurological perspective, this seems to be at loggerheads with findings that active brain engagement (puzzles, games, music, etc) can help push out alzheimer's and such degenerative diseases. At first read, I felt an urge to conspiracy theorize that the study was sponsored to help direct funding to other areas of schooling instead of increasing funding overall.
- andreilys 6y ago
  What I understand from this study is that whether you learn music or sit on your couch will have no difference on your cognitive abilities and only make you better at music if you do the former. That's in stark contradiction to: The authors found studies with high-quality design, such as those which used a group of active controls – children who did not learn music but instead learned a different skill, such as dance or sports, for example – showed no effect of music education on cognitive or academic performance. The comparison is to children engaged in some sort of behavior, not passively sitting on the couch consuming tv. Also the whole concept of measuring intelligence in itself is dubious at best. IQ tests in particular are nothing more than measures of how good someone is at taking tests and not a good measure of intelligence.
- cycomanic 6y ago
  > > The headline makes it sound like learning music is about as useless as sitting on your couch, as far as intelligence goes. > Isn't that kind of what the study says though? It specifically concludes: > > Moreover, recent correlational studies have confirmed that music engagement is not associated with domain-general cognitive skills or academic performance. > What I understand from this study is that whether you learn music or sit on your couch will have no difference on your cognitive abilities and only make you better at music if you do the former. That's actually not quite clear to me, the article says: >The authors found studies with high-quality design, such as those which used a group of active controls – children who did not learn music but instead learned a different skill, such as dance or sports, for example – showed no effect of music education on cognitive or academic performance. That seems to indicate that siting on the couch is not the same. It also changes the title somewhat, to "learning music is not better than dance or sport to improve cognitive skills"

by lhorie 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

Farow 6y ago

> The headline makes it sound like learning music is about as useless as sitting on your couch, as far as intelligence goes. Isn't that kind of what the study says though? It specifically concludes: > Moreover, recent correlational studies have confirmed that music engagement is not associated with domain-general cognitive skills or academic performance. What I understand from this study is that whether you learn music or sit on your couch will have no difference on your cognitive abilities and only make you better at music if you do the former. The study also mentions that you can't transfer skills to different domains. I think this further reinforces their conclusion. > While human cognition has been shown to be malleable to training, transfer of skills appears to be limited to the training domain and, at best, other similar domains. [...] Near transfer – i.e., the transfer of skills within the same domain – is sometimes observed, far transfer – i.e., the transfer of skills across two distant domains – is rare or possibly inexistent. While music can have positive effects, those would be mostly limited your general well-being, will not make you smarter and can be achieved through other activities as well. > Music may be beneficial for non-cognitive constructs in children such as prosocial behavior and self-esteem. These possible advantages are not likely to be specific to music, though. In fact, any enticing and empowering activity may improve children’s well-being.

sriku 6y ago
From a neurological perspective, this seems to be at loggerheads with findings that active brain engagement (puzzles, games, music, etc) can help push out alzheimer's and such degenerative diseases. At first read, I felt an urge to conspiracy theorize that the study was sponsored to help direct funding to other areas of schooling instead of increasing funding overall.
andreilys 6y ago
What I understand from this study is that whether you learn music or sit on your couch will have no difference on your cognitive abilities and only make you better at music if you do the former. That's in stark contradiction to: The authors found studies with high-quality design, such as those which used a group of active controls – children who did not learn music but instead learned a different skill, such as dance or sports, for example – showed no effect of music education on cognitive or academic performance. The comparison is to children engaged in some sort of behavior, not passively sitting on the couch consuming tv. Also the whole concept of measuring intelligence in itself is dubious at best. IQ tests in particular are nothing more than measures of how good someone is at taking tests and not a good measure of intelligence.
cycomanic 6y ago
> > The headline makes it sound like learning music is about as useless as sitting on your couch, as far as intelligence goes. > Isn't that kind of what the study says though? It specifically concludes: > > Moreover, recent correlational studies have confirmed that music engagement is not associated with domain-general cognitive skills or academic performance. > What I understand from this study is that whether you learn music or sit on your couch will have no difference on your cognitive abilities and only make you better at music if you do the former. That's actually not quite clear to me, the article says: >The authors found studies with high-quality design, such as those which used a group of active controls – children who did not learn music but instead learned a different skill, such as dance or sports, for example – showed no effect of music education on cognitive or academic performance. That seems to indicate that siting on the couch is not the same. It also changes the title somewhat, to "learning music is not better than dance or sport to improve cognitive skills"