In a recent study published in the journal PLoS One, researchers at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, investigated the relationship between formal music instruction during childhood and the subsequent development of socioemotional, rhythmic, and matching skills. They conducted a longitudinal case-control cohort study comparing 83 children enrolled in either music, sports, or out-of-school tutoring programs.
Results revealed that participants in music tutoring programs outperformed their peers in the control cohort on pitch-matching ability. These findings suggest that long-term formal music education programs can positively influence some aspects of children’s social-emotional development, although the overall impact is limited.
Study: Long-term music instruction is partly linked to the development of social-emotional skills. Image credit: Photo joy / Shutterstock
Record
Formal music instruction is the systematic training of instrumental technique and music theory. Previous research has suggested its positive benefits in improving students’ abilities for pitch matching (the ability to imitate the pitch of an external sound) and rhythmic accompaniment (the ability to synchronize internal rhythms with externally perceived ones).
Kuther (2022) hypothesized that music instruction can promote social and emotional functioning. The studies also elucidate the social roles of pitch-matching and rhythmic drift in social bonding, effective communication, collective identity development, and cooperation.
Separate bodies of literature have explored the relationship between music education and cognition or self-esteem. Unfortunately, these studies often investigate one-on-one music instruction and fail to explore the effects of group-based music education programs that often include after-school activities for students.
The present study aims to address these knowledge gaps by assessing 1. Do children exposed to after-school programs differ in their pitch-matching ability, socioemotional competence, and rhythmic engagement ability compared to those who are not? 2. What is the relationship between pitch-matching and rhythmic support and socio-emotional outcomes?
About the study
Study data came from a seven-year cohort study of children aged between five and eight years (mean = 6.81) from the greater Los Angeles area, United States (US) of America. Participants included three groups – music (Youth Orchestra, n = 26), sports (soccer or swimming, n = 28) or control (no after-school activity, n = 29) educational programs.
Research instruments included pitch-matching tasks, rhythmic support assessments, sharing tasks, and cognitive/empathy assessments. Pitch-matching was assessed using a singing task in which participants had to imitate the pitch (10 melodies, each 5–9 notes) of vocally trained experimenters. Experimenter and participant recordings were compared using the methodologies of Pfordresher and Brown (2007) via tone matching (hertz [HZ]) comparisons, scored between 0 and 1.
Rhythmic support was assessed in “alone” and “social” scenarios. In the first, participants were given a drum and asked to beat it to match a pre-recorded audio beat (120- or 180-bpm [bpm]). In the latter, a trained researcher joined the participants in drumming to the pre-recorded beat. Accuracy and timing were assessed using the methodologies of Kirschner and Tomasello (2009) and scored between 0–1.
Sharing was assessed using a variant of the dictator game, which assessed children’s willingness to share 10–15 stickers they had received with a simulated stranger without any personal benefit. Empathy (state, trait, and theory of mind) and cognitive variables were assessed using the Empathy Index for Children and Adolescents (IECA), the Reading the Mind in the Eyes test (Eyes Test), and the Wechsler Abbreviation Scale of Intelligence (WASI-II) subscales, respectively.
Statistical differences between cohorts were calculated using principal component analysis (PCA) and linear mixed effects models.
Tone-matched task stimuli. Musical score showing the tunes sung during the task. Each numbered segment represents a melody first heard by the participant and then echoed back to the experimenter. Sections 1–3, 4–6, 7–8 and 9–10 were grouped into four musical phrases during analysis.
Study findings
Tone-matching analysis revealed significant differences between the music and other cohort participants – the former were on average 0.13 points higher than the sports group and 0.26 higher than the controls. No effect of time (years) was noted on this criterion.
While rhythmic scores did not differ between cohorts at the start of the study (year 1), all groups showed improvements in scores per year. The improvements were most significant in the musical group.
Tests of social-emotional skills revealed that the sports group was the most likely to share, followed by the music group (9% less), with controls performing the poorest. However, all groups showed annual improvements in these skills (∼7.2% increase per year).
Most empathy tests gave confusing results at first, but the eye test results improved over the years. Once again, the improvements were most significant in the music band.
conclusions
In contrast to previous research, the present study did not find improvements in pitch-matching over time, likely due to the complexity of the singing activity used here compared to previous studies. Instead, empathy and, more significantly, rhythmic support improved over the years.
On most tests (except sharing and some measures of empathy), participants in the music cohort were observed to outperform their peers. Together, these findings highlight the benefits of formal music education on children’s social-emotional development, with the strength of the benefits dependent on the domain’s similarity to music.
