Are musicians superior thinkers?

I have written a few articles on the benefits that learning to play piano bring to my pupils – Piano lessons improve language skill in young children, Top 10 Health Benefits of Playing the Piano and Does learning piano promote better school results? – which showcase some amazing work carried out by experts around the world into this phenomenon.

Another recently published study, Superior fluid cognition in trained musicians, by Jim Meyer Department of Psychology, Elmhurst College, USA, Pinar Gupse Oguz and Katherine Sledge Moore Department of Psychology, Arcadia University, Glenside, PA, Elmhurst, IL, USA add further weight to the evidence.

Published in the Psychology of Music, the language is dry as you would expect from a research paper but it was reviewed by Tom Jacobs of Pacific Standard and he picks out the salient parts nicely.

“Combining the results of all the tests, “musicians with extensive experience scored significantly higher than non-musicians and less-trained musicians,” the researchers write in the journal Psychology of Music. Specifically, they did better on four of the five cognitive skills that the tests measured.” and “If that finding is confirmed using a larger sample, “then as a society, we should be interested in universal musical education, perhaps starting in elementary and pre-school-aged children,” the researchers argue.” are among the amazing findings.

Read Tom’s write up on the research paper over on the Pacific Standard website. His article concludes with this advice, “These findings strongly suggest that if you can master music, the skills you learn will prove very valuable even if you never touch an instrument again for the rest of your life. Parents and school administrators, take note.”