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Music & How it Affects Children

You need only to adjust the dial on your car radio while observing your child in the backseat to realize that music has an affect on children. For years scientists have been trying to figure out just what kind of an affect. Today, the consensus is that music affects children in profound ways, most of them positive.

  1. Music and the Brain

    • It has long been believed that listening to music and playing music has a positive effect on a child's cognitive brain development. According to a 2006 study published in the medical journal Brain, researchers have found concrete evidence that children who take music lessons show different brain development than children who do not receive musical training. By using magnetoencephalography (technology that measures the electrical fields generated when groups of neurons fire in synchrony), researchers found that musical training improves cognitive functioning related to memory and attention.

    Music and Intelligence

    • Improvements in cognitive functioning result in an improvement in a child's overall intelligence. Numerous studies have shown that listening to and playing music can improve nonmusical abilities such as literacy, verbal memory, visiospatial processing, mathematics and IQ. Data from the University of Texas indicate that those students who received an arts education that included music received higher SAT scores. This connection between listening to music and increased intelligence is commonly referred to as "the Mozart Effect."

    Music and Emotions

    • Brain imaging scans have shown that different areas of the brain related to emotion become active depending on the pleasantness or unpleasantness of music. It is the belief of many scientists that this type of research will one day lead to the discovery of how types of music can help with different kinds of emotional disorders.

    Social Effects

    • Music can have a profound effect on your child's social life. Research indicates that participation in extracurricular activities, such as music performance, positively affects students' academic and social performance. Moreover, engaging in such extracurricular activities has been shown to increase self-esteem and decrease the chances that the child will drop out of school.

    Bringing Music to Your Child's Life

    • You can bring music to your child's life prior to her birth by listening to music while you are pregnant. Once your child is born, there will be a host of opportunities to involve your child with music. You can explore the music programs at your child's school or find private music lessons on sites such as Craigslist.com. Moreover, playing music in your house is a great way to bring music to your child's life. Researchers believe that the best music you can play for your child comes from the baroque school of composers, such as Francois Couperin, Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frederic Handel.

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