Playing the Piano Might Make You Smarter"It is becoming more and more clear how important all the arts are in brain development."
Instrumental Improvement
A 1999 study conducted at Columbia County Schools in Harlem, Georgia, confirmed these results.
Joyce M. Cheek and Lyle R. Smith polled eighth grade musicians on their musical history—whether they'd had individual instruction,
group instruction, and what instrument they played.
The researchers then compared this data to scores on the Iowa Basic Test, and standardized skills test, and found that those students who had experienced individual instruction showed better results than those who had had group instruction.
Furthermore, they found that those who played the keyboard—as opposed to singing, horns, drums, and a number of other instruments—had the best scores of all.
Most researchers are at somewhat of a loss to explain the phenomenon. Dr. Lyle Smith says bluntly, "I just don't know how to explain it. It's really puzzled me why the keyboard over other instruments."
Cheek, a math teacher at Harlem High School, says that this research does not necessarily suggest to her a panacea for our math and science woes, though it is hopeful nonetheless. "While giving every child keyboard lessons isn't going to fix all our problems," she says,
"it is becoming more and more clear how important all the arts are in brain development. Since we know now there is a link between the arts and math and science, we need to consider these things in future curriculum development."
Rauscher, now at the University of Wisconsin, Osh Kosh, whose forthcoming article in Early Childhood Research Quarterly documents this phenomenon in kindergartners, is of the opinion that it's merely the incidental design of the instrument that accounts for the differences. She believes that a student can achieve the same things on another instrument.
To her mind, musical literacy is the most important thing in improving cognitive abilities; it's just that the piano makes that literacy more accessible. "It's likely because the keyboard lays it out visually," she says.
"Learning on the piano may just be a more direct route to this literacy."
"It is becoming more and more clear how important all the arts are in brain development."
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BRAIN CONNECTION
