Musical Education Improves Linguistic Ability

For those of you who are not familiar with Howard Gardiner, he proposed that there were several kinds of intelligences: Linguistic, Logical/Mathematical, Spatial, Bodily/Kinesthetic, Musical, Interpersonal and Intrapersonal. In the next few weeks, I’ll be showing how music education can Read More …

Music In Our Schools Month

March is National Music in Our Schools Month, and in honor of the occasion, I thought I’d present you with a top ten list of why children should be encouraged to listen to classical music and learn to play an Read More …

Musicians Have Better Brainstems

From a study by Wong PC, Skoe E, Russo NM, Dees T, and Kraus N: Music and speech are very cognitively demanding auditory phenomena generally attributed to cortical rather than subcortical circuitry. We examined brainstem encoding of linguistic pitch and Read More …

Music Training Improves Vocabulary and Verbal Sequencing

From a study by Joseph M Piro and Camilo Ortiz: The major aim of this quasi-experimental study was to examine the effects of a scaffolded music instruction program on the vocabulary and verbal sequencing skills of two cohorts of second-grade Read More …

Leveling the Playing Field

I have decided, contrary to my usual custom, to reprint this letter to Nature by researchers Martin Gardiner, Alan Fox, Faith Knowles, and Donna Jeffrey almost in its entirety, precisely because it is so succinct. Sir — It has been Read More …

Music Instruction Improves SAT Scores

Students who had 4 or more years of music instruction outperformed most other groups on the SAT exams, scoring an average of 56 points higher on the verbal portion of the test and 39 points higher on the math portion Read More …

Music Training Improves Language Development

From a study by S Jentschke, S Koelsch, and AD Friederici : Language and music are human universals involving perceptually discrete elements organized in hierarchically structured sequences. The set of principles governing the combination of these structural elements into sequences Read More …