The effects of musical experience on cognitive and language abilities in Hong Kong children

Abstract

Musical experience has been shown to improve both language and cognitive abilities in children and adults (Anvari, Trainor, Woodside, & Levy, 2002; Bialystok & DePape, 2009), which is thought to be due to overlapping neural networks (Slevc & Okada, 2015). This project explored whether experience with formal musical training significantly improves performance on language and cognitive tasks in children aged five to ten in Hong Kong. Fifty-one children with and without formal musical training participated in the project. Parents provided information about the child’s musical experience and background information via questionnaire. Two groups were formed based on self-report of whether their child had formal musical training or not. Children were individually tested on a set of tasks measuring auditory short-term memory and working memory, auditory attention, phonological awareness, and auditory comprehension. Factors which might affect the outcome variables, such as age, gender, socio-economic status and language background were analysed and statistically controlled if needed in the analysis of the outcome measures. The results showed that musical experience did not significantly improve memory, phonological awareness, or auditory comprehension. However, musical experience significantly improved auditory attention. The project demonstrates domain-specific improvements as a result of musical experience.