[HN Gopher] Study finds learning music won't make children smart
___________________________________________________________________
Study finds learning music won't make children smart
Author : pseudolus
Score : 96 points
Date : 2020-07-30 16:14 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.thenational.ae)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.thenational.ae)
| m1117 wrote:
| Yes, and instead all the children should go smoke cigarettes
| instead and drink alcohol.
| supernova87a wrote:
| Learning music doesn't make you smart. But for smart kids,
| learning music sure as hell makes you more interesting and useful
| in life.
| tunesmith wrote:
| I think learning music is very effective for self-improvement for
| other reasons, it's a very effective exercise in reconciling
| feelings with reality. Do you love a particular section of the
| music in your head and it's really hard? You just have to keep
| wrestling with reality to learn it. Are you trying to express a
| certain feeling with music? You have to get skilled enough at the
| music/instrument to be able to express it. I don't know if that
| means it actually helps teach emotional self-regulation in
| general, but I wouldn't be surprised.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Where did the idea come from that studying music was meant to
| make kids smart? I don't see the presumed connection. Not
| everything we learn is meant to increase our cognitive abilities.
| Schools teach music to product more well-rounded individuals, not
| to make them smarter. Schools are something more than IQ
| factories.
| nottorp wrote:
| Probably goes for anything children are forced to learn.
|
| But this doesn't mean you shouldn't send young children here and
| there to TRY stuff... just stop early if they don't like it.
|
| Iirc my parents sent me to do music, football, computers and
| martial arts. Two of them i HATED, two of them i stuck with for
| my lifetime.
| skybrian wrote:
| Note that since we are talking about averages, it could be true
| both that music training on average doesn't have a visible
| effect, but that some specific ways of doing music training are
| helpful and others are harmful. There are a wide variety of ways
| to teach music and a broad study won't figure out which ones are
| better or worse.
|
| Or it could be the musical training is effective for a certain
| people but detrimental for others, and the average would be near
| zero.
|
| However, there's a limit to how much research you can do. Chasing
| after effects on subsets of the population has problems too.
| https://xkcd.com/882/
| claydavisss wrote:
| This only matters to people who still correlate intelligence with
| success or happiness (as mentioned elsewhere here, tiger moms).
| If the last fifty years has taught us anything, its that being
| very handy with an electric guitar vastly increases the chances
| of having sex with another person.
| oscargrouch wrote:
| I have a subjective and still esoteric(be warned) theory about
| attention span. As someone who have learned to play an instrument
| at my early teens, i've learned that to be actually good at
| something, you need to learn to deal with the primary discomfort
| feeling. You are learning to fighting your natural 'cavemen
| nature', the more primitive parts of your brain that are more
| inclined to satisfying immediate pleasures. As i've said, is a
| subjetive observation, but in my experience at least, people that
| tend to have lower quality results in what they do, apparently
| have lower 'attention spans'. Their effort to concentrate into
| something is faster, and if you see a puppy dog, or a cat, or
| even a human baby, you can see they are distracted easily,
| jumping from one subject to another very fast.
|
| Now if we think about humans that we regard the most, like
| Newton, Beethoven, Einstein, Curie, Rodin, etc..
|
| The research or the product of their labor require a very big
| attention span, as in, they need to meditate over long periods of
| time on the same subject.
|
| Now, getting back to the point, i've learned that things like
| learning a musical instrument, programming, learning some math,
| or reading classics, helped me into acquiring long attention
| spans, resulting in a improvement on the quality of my thoughts,
| ideas and products of the thinking process.
|
| Maybe just learning music alone wont prove anything, but i bet
| that if you mix the right kind of activities, you can have at
| least, a starting point to sophisticated human beings.
| Havoc wrote:
| How about discipline?
| flyGuyOnTheSly wrote:
| I would argue that studying music (especially music theory) at a
| young age has helped me tremendously as a programmer in my old
| age.
|
| I am writing an algo trading bot right now and I make a habit of
| reading the entire codebase fairly regularly to make sure I
| understand exactly what is going on at all times while the bot is
| running.
|
| Which seems similar to reading and understanding a sheet (or a
| book) of music before you play it.
|
| There must be some correlation there although I have no hard
| evidence.
| [deleted]
| rjstreur wrote:
| The idea that you shouldn't play music because psychologists say
| it won't make you smarter by some quantitative metric is so on-
| brand for this site.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| The study doesn't conclude that learning music is useless. They
| focused only on generalized cognitive measures.
|
| Dedicated learning of any activity over time, music or otherwise,
| likely has long-term benefits in terms of learning how to focus,
| how to achieve goals, how to manage time, and other structural
| improvements.
|
| The authors even cite other studies showing that learning music
| can improve well-being, improve self-esteem, encourage prosocial
| behavior, and even lead to more narrow cognitive improvements in
| math fields that might not necessarily appear on generalized IQ
| tests.
|
| > First, music may be beneficial for non-cognitive constructs in
| children such as prosocial behavior and self-esteem (e.g., Aleman
| et al., 2017). These possible advantages are not likely to be
| specific to music, though. In fact, any enticing and empowering
| activity may improve children's well-being. Second, elements of
| music instruction (e.g., arithmetical music notation) could be
| used to facilitate learning in other disciplines such as
| arithmetic (Azaryahu, Courey, Elkoshi, & Adi-Japha, 2019; Courey,
| Balogh, Siker, & Paik, 2012; Ribeiro & Santos, 2017).
| aaron695 wrote:
| You can't change IQ (You probably can, but it's not simple)
|
| But you can change(I think) the second biggest life impacting
| testable factor in people, conscientiousness.
|
| Seems like learning music is a good way to learn
| conscientiousness.
|
| This article is really bad advice.
| wintermutestwin wrote:
| IMO, someone who perseveres through the horribly difficult early
| stages of learning an instrument to the point where they can play
| something passably well is learning delayed gratification. The
| ability to delay gratification is directly correlated with
| success in life:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_marshmallow_experimen...
| Edman274 wrote:
| That correlation disappears once you control for wealth. People
| go for instant gratification once they've learned that they
| can't trust that the thing they're delaying gratification for
| will ever come. People like to make fun of people who pick 100
| dollars today over 200 dollars a month from now, but for the
| "other half", 200 dollars a month from now might as well be an
| eternity from now. And because wealth tends to be heritable and
| have other knock-on effects, what the study is really testing
| for is how trustworthy a child thinks adults are with offers,
| which is affected by whether that child is raised in the kind
| of environment where nothing can be guaranteed since an entire
| paycheck may have been entirely used up.
| timack wrote:
| "Why Rich Kids Are So Good at the Marshmallow Test" : https:/
| /www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/06/marshmall...
| glangdale wrote:
| IIRC the ability to delay gratification as measured by the
| Stanford Marshmallow Experiment is quite heavily correlated
| with "food security in the household" and whether you are
| involuntarily hungry as a kid. Half the correlation goes away
| in replication studies that controlled for social background.
| lopmotr wrote:
| People have such weird attitudes to IQ. Either denial of it's
| significance or hope to improve it by applying the right life
| experiences. It all seems based around the fear of the
| possibility that some of us really are born inferior and doomed
| to a worse life than others.
|
| But we are. By far the easiest way to improve a child's IQ is to
| select parents with high IQ. But nobody wants to deselect
| themselves so wanting a high IQ child goes against the instinct
| of wanting to reproduce for most people and they're stuck in a
| cognitive dissonance.
|
| We can reduce it through neglect and trauma but there's no known
| lasting way to enhance it beyond the natural limit each person is
| born with.
|
| How about just accept that we're not all born equal? Nobody
| worries that a dog is less intelligent than a person but we still
| have pet dogs and happily accept their limitations.
| jonfw wrote:
| The question becomes 'as opposed to what?'
|
| The article says that studies which controlled against dance or
| sports showed no additional effect. Which looks really good for
| music IMO- because exercise has incredible benefits.
|
| Maybe as compared to sports, music doesn't show additional
| benefit- how about as compared to watching YouTube videos?
| Playing flappy bird?
|
| I find it hard to believe that we can really 'prove' anything
| with respect to child development. The studies have a
| phenomenally low lack of control on one end, which produces a LOT
| of noise. On the other end- we have no effective ways of
| measuring child development. Standardized tests or IQ produce
| metrics that are somewhat useful to measure how productive a
| child may be, but is that really what you want to optimize for as
| a parent?
|
| What we really want to do for our kids is optimize for lifelong
| happiness. And we aren't even remotely close to measuring that.
| Hoasi wrote:
| > The question becomes 'as opposed to what?'
|
| A better question is: why do you learn or teach music?
|
| Learning music provides plenty of benefits for the development
| of children, but nobody teaches music with the specific goal of
| rendering people smarter.
| Simulacra wrote:
| Depends who you ask. If you ask a music teacher I am sure
| they will cite chapter and verse for why music is the
| ultimate learning experience for children, along with many
| more reasons why they teach it. When I was in school we had
| to choose an extracurricular activity - band, chorus, etc. If
| students and their parents did not have to choose an arts
| class, but instead chose to use that time to double reading
| or math, it would lead to decreased funding and employment
| for those teachers.
| nickff wrote:
| Many people force their children to learn an instrument with
| the expectation that it will make them more intelligent, and
| lead to better life outcomes.
| fyz wrote:
| Not trying to be argue for the sake of arguing, but is
| there some data to back this claim up? Anecdotally I'm
| aware of many parents who think music makes their kid well
| rounded, but I'm not aware of parents that specifically
| believe learning music makes their kid more intelligent in
| non-musical areas.
| woko wrote:
| > I'm not aware of parents that specifically believe
| learning music makes their kid more intelligent in non-
| musical areas.
|
| It is all anecdotal evidence, but I am aware of some
| parents who "forced" their baby (and then little kid) to
| listen to classical music (specifically Mozart), because
| the kid would become a genius. Apparently, after some
| googling, it is called the "Mozart effect". Here are
| press articles about it:
|
| [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fact-or-
| fiction-b...
|
| [2] https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20130107-can-
| mozart-boost...
|
| Could it be a motivation for teaching music to little
| kids? That is what is suggested in the conclusions of the
| articles linked above, and which I quote below. Some
| parents might be receptive to these conclusions.
|
| From the Scientific American article [1]:
|
| > Rather than passively listening to music, Rauscher
| advocates putting an instrument into the hands of a
| youngster to raise intelligence. She cites a 1997
| University of California, Los Angeles, study that found,
| among 25,000 students, those who had spent time involved
| in a musical pursuit tested higher on SATs and reading
| proficiency exams than those with no instruction in
| music.
|
| From the BBC article [2]:
|
| > There is a way in which music can make a difference to
| your IQ, though. Unfortunately it requires a bit more
| effort than putting on a CD. Learning to play a musical
| instrument can have a beneficial effect on your brain.
| Jessica Grahn, a cognitive scientist at Western
| University in London, Ontario says that a year of piano
| lessons, combined with regular practice can increase IQ
| by as much as three points.
| Tyr42 wrote:
| I remember lots of posters aimed at parents around the
| music room, with pictures like a tray of surgical
| instruments as well as a wooden reed. With some caption
| like "Music improves life outcomes" or something like
| that.
|
| So schools at least push this narrative.
| searchableguy wrote:
| My parents didn't do that but I did after watching a
| documentary that I can't remember name of. In the end
| though, I just beat my computer chair for a little bit of
| fun and haven't touched the guitar.
| Shivetya wrote:
| well I am going with, paying more attention to children
| regardless of skill, hobby, or whatnot, improves their results
| across the board.
|
| Each time I read a story about how doing X improves a child's
| ability I simply think, well yeah, paying more attention to
| them does that.
| webmaven wrote:
| _> Each time I read a story about how doing X improves a
| child 's ability I simply think, well yeah, paying more
| attention to them does that._
|
| This is a problem with a lot of research on educational
| methodologies as well, in that there is usually some
| selection bias being applied to the teachers participating in
| a study, as well as a placebo effect.
| Sharlin wrote:
| What studies show that exercise makes children smarter?
| Fiveplus wrote:
| Dunno if it was a genuine question, but I found one that you
| might be interested in:
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28789992/
| pibsd wrote:
| I would say those who study music (classical) at young age come
| from quite wealthy families, which mean easier access to
| resources, e.g., books, good schools, dedicated teachers, etc
| which could eventually lead to better iq test results.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Piano helped me incredibly as an emotional outlet, I wasn't
| good and can't really play anything without music, but it gave
| me a tool for cathartic expression.
|
| That might have helped with school studies and such?
| nonbirithm wrote:
| I played piano also, but only because my parents prodded me
| to (not forced, but essentially told me I ought to do and
| hired a teacher so I'd have to show progress at weekly
| intervals).
|
| I didn't like it at all. To this day I still have an
| adversity to touching a physical instrument because of the
| memories I had of being 12, trying to challenge myself to
| playing a piece I liked and completely failing to reach a
| competent level, because I actually didn't care enough about
| piano as opposed to spending my time on transient time-
| wasters like television shows about video games, and I _knew_
| that I didn 't care enough to get good, but I was encouraged
| to challenge myself anyways, and _then_ I felt inferior
| because of seeing all the people the same age or younger
| around me that handled pieces many times more difficult with
| ease.
|
| I hated being told that I did great by everyone after a
| recital where I ended up pausing in silence for an entire
| minute, because I knew they were only trying to keep my mood
| from deteriorating afterwards and because I personally knew
| from the heart that I did not do anything resembling "great."
|
| Then I joined wind ensemble in high school.
|
| As a result I can't listen to classical music without anxiety
| bubbling up any longer because of the ingrained memories of
| being pushed to be better than other people and being
| compelled to get into regional division X and not realizing
| that as someone without a purposeful devotion to music all of
| that was _hopeless_ to accomplish from the start, such that
| the disappointment in my lack of abilities that followed was
| inevitable.
| InvisibleUp wrote:
| It could simply be that growing up in an environment where being
| taught music is possible (with tutors and teachers and
| instruments all paid for) is correlated with doing better in
| school. If you're growing up with parents who struggle to pay the
| bills, who can't afford the time or money to teach their kids
| music, odds are those kids are struggling in other parts of their
| life too.
| soperj wrote:
| Michael Jackson grew up dirt fucking poor. You don't need to be
| rich to play music.
| notahacker wrote:
| You don't need to be rich or even middle class to play music,
| but you're _much more likely_ to get a flute and lessons on
| how to play it if you 've got parents who aren't dirt fucking
| poor and/or totally uninterested in your education. Thus
| there's obvious an association between music lessons and
| family background that needs controlling for.
|
| As for MJ, he might not have been born rich, but nobody would
| say his musical accomplishments weren't linked to decisions
| his parents made for him.
| pseudolus wrote:
| A link to the referenced journal article "Cognitive and academic
| benefits of music training with children: A multilevel meta-
| analysis" published in Memory and Cognition [0].
|
| [0] https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/s13421-020-01060-2
| danielrhodes wrote:
| Maybe it doesn't make children smart, but it certainly makes them
| look smart.
| ravedave5 wrote:
| Some of the best programmers I know were music majors turned
| programmer. There's something about the creativity or learning of
| another abstract "language" that music brings that seems to tie
| well into programming.
| wufufufu wrote:
| Studying music will make you better at music. Studying IQ tests
| will make you better at IQ tests.
|
| I think we put too much emphasis on general intelligence when
| it's not well defined and easily gamed. It's also a talking point
| for racists.
| threatofrain wrote:
| Studying music will make you way better at music than studying
| sequences of ravens matrices will make you good at ravens
| matrices.
| sn41 wrote:
| Chess grandmasters don't make great mathematicians. Similarly,
| great warriors may not become great scientists. I don't see a
| lot of people making jumps from one technical field into
| another. They make a jump from one technical field to a general
| field, like politics or Venture capital.
| dr_orpheus wrote:
| Reminds me of one of my favorite comics from Saturday Morning
| Breakfast cereal
|
| https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2010-01-29
| [deleted]
| 236dev wrote:
| how is putting an emphasis on general intelligence a talking
| point for racists?
| [deleted]
| mindcrime wrote:
| The post you're responding to may have been alluding to the
| controversy around the book "The Bell Curve" and follow-on
| discussion, where the questions of race and intelligence
| became a real hot button.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve#Allegations_of_.
| ..
| DontTellAnyone wrote:
| Because the data strongly suggests that racial differences in
| general intelligence exist and exist due to genetic
| differences between populations. This idea makes certain
| people almost foam at the mouth (I've witnessed this
| personally and I'm only barely exaggerating).
|
| Stephen Hsu, former VP of research at MSU for example was
| recently "canceled" from his job because he stated - in a
| very milquetoast and reasonable way - that even though he's
| aware that this kind of thing has been used to oppress people
| in the past, studies (specifically genome wide association
| studies) suggest that racial differences in intelligence are
| real and largely due to underlying genetic differences and
| not just socio-economic factors.
| rjsw wrote:
| The genetic differences could be down to socio-economic
| factors though, such as some of your ancestors having been
| slaves and restricted in how they could choose a partner.
| viklove wrote:
| Evolution works on far, far longer timescales than you're
| suggesting.
| jonfw wrote:
| Most of our attempts to quantify intelligence have shown a
| correlation with race. That's evidence of something- either
| bad tests with cultural bias, or differences in intelligence
| between races.
|
| I think most people recognize that the latter idea would be
| really bad for society, and thus requires a pretty high bar
| of evidence to consider, and IQ tests are far from good
| enough evidence.
| tgv wrote:
| Which makes IQ a talking point for racists, and "general
| intelligence" an almost unfalsifiable defence against it.
| yboris wrote:
| I'm thinking that racism in root is the belief of superiority
| of one race over another. In the past, tests were designed in
| ways that (perhaps unintentionally) disadvantaged people of
| color (for example tests included [white] cultural
| knowledge). While better tests have been developed, if in the
| end they show that (even if only on average) there is a minor
| difference in test scores between whites and blacks, racists
| will point to it as definitive proof (with no care about the
| tests' external validity).
| quonn wrote:
| Can you please give an example of this supposed cultural
| knowledge? In particular one that PoC raised in the same
| country and having the same education would supposedly have
| a disadvantage in?
| yboris wrote:
| My memory of the claims I came across during my time in
| Educational Psychology Ph.D.: tests in the distant past
| (early 1900s) were often culturally biased (even if
| unintentionally). I couldn't quickly find examples, but
| the gist is language or customs more available to rich
| white kids than otherwise (think playing golf, polo,
| etc).
|
| One quick post I came across when looking just now is
| about "oarsman" and "regatta", words more-likely to be
| familiar to rich white kids than otherwise:
|
| https://www.clearchoiceprep.com/sat-act-prep-blog/the-
| most-i...
| DubiousPusher wrote:
| I have a similar view. The only thing that holds me back from
| chucking it out in total is the research showing a bunch of
| better life outcomes correlated with IQ.
|
| I'm open to being set straight on this point but my
| understanding is that research is largely apart and of a better
| quality than the more race bating stuff of 'The Bell Curve'
| crowd.
|
| Edit: Full disclosure, I am really shooting from the hip here
| so please go easy. This is an issue I've bumped into a couple
| times and have never gone super in-depth on.
| chillwaves wrote:
| Then call it a "successful in capitalist society" test.
| DubiousPusher wrote:
| The current name implies it is a measure of a fairly poorly
| defined thing, general intelligence. So yes, I think
| changing the name would be a good idea.
|
| Of course there is a reason when neurologists do tests for
| cognitive decline or deficiency they use a range of tests,
| IQ being only one of several employed.
| kqr wrote:
| There's something I've read about IQ where the correlation
| you speak of only applies to the, say, lower half of the
| range. I.e. someone with an IQ of 90 will do better in life
| than one with an IQ of 75, but you won't find a significant
| difference when comparing 110 and 125.
|
| So basically IQ "works" in the lower range, and this shows
| through as a weaker correlation across the entire range, even
| though it is meaningless in the upper range.
|
| This would then make sense too -- in the low end, IQ is
| affected by things like malnutrition, lead poisoning, and the
| like, which happen to people who live in areas where everyone
| are having worse life outcomes, but not because of their IQ.
|
| I wish I had a reference for this hypothesis but I lost it.
| if someone does please hit me up.
| mywittyname wrote:
| > but you won't find a significant difference when
| comparing 110 and 125.
|
| IQ is the measurement of how capable you are at abstract
| learning. So a lower IQ will lock you out of certain jobs,
| at least on merit alone. Like you won't be a university
| math professor with a 110 IQ, but you'd probably be a fine
| nurse. A 75 IQ locks you out of basically any job. I
| believe the military found that ~83 is the lowest IQ that
| is trainable for the most rudimentary job.
|
| But having a high IQ is in-and-of-itself, not a guarantee
| of success, because socio-economic factors can also lock
| you out of certain jobs. 100 years ago, being a woman was
| enough to prevent you from being a university professor,
| regardless of your IQ. And even today, you still have to be
| born in the right country to the right parents to have the
| chance to be a doctor or something.
|
| However, there is a pretty big difference between a 110IQ
| and a 125. That's a 1.5 standard deviation improvement.
| That's like comparing an American man who is 6'1 to one who
| is 6'6.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Social skills, family background, and physical looks
| correlate far more with success than raw IQ. Raw IQ is
| overrated. See e.g.
|
| https://www.jstor.org/stable/20628656?seq=1
|
| ~125 eases entry into well-paid middle class jobs. Over 140
| people start to seem weird by median standards. Over 160
| they can seem very weird indeed, and are likely to become
| isolated without a compatible environment. So they're just
| as likely to fail spectacularly as to become innovative
| successes.
| smegma2 wrote:
| How is it not well defined when we can observe positive
| correlations between unrelated cognitive tasks?
| BurningFrog wrote:
| How are IQ tests "easily gamed"?
|
| I suspect that is only true for really smart people :)
| lhorie wrote:
| Easiest way to "game" it is to take it multiple times or
| practice/cram for it.
| Symmetry wrote:
| There are lots of tests out there that all correlate with
| general mental ability. Some of these, like mental rotation
| tests, benefit a lot from practice. Some of them, like
| Raven's Progressive Matrices, don't. The tests used in
| modern IQ tests are the ones where practice don't give much
| benefit.
| skinkestek wrote:
| At least around here it seems people are allowed to take
| the Mensa test multiple times.
|
| I never took the official one but I understand a lot of
| effort goes into constructing test sets that doesn't
| benefit from cramming but (except for getting used to the
| format, which you can do online) only on raw "processing
| power".
|
| I'm not a scientists or a psychiatrist so take my word for
| just that: my understanding.
|
| Also I note that from what I hear on HN it seems to be that
| in USA IQ tests contain both spelling and history questions
| which - in my ears sounds like something very different
| from a raw IQ test.
| [deleted]
| notahacker wrote:
| The simplest way to 'game' multiple choice based forms of IQ
| test is to guess the multiple choice options when you don't
| actually know the answer. This isn't likely to allow you to
| fake genius, but will boost your score relative to a majority
| who don't attempt all questions unless there's a very well-
| designed negative marking scheme.
|
| Willingness to guess answers to ensure the whole test is
| completed probably is associated with many of the success
| outcomes associated with higher IQ scores, but it isn't
| exactly what most people would consider to be intelligence.
| pvarangot wrote:
| Everyone does better at IQ tests if they repeatedly practice
| IQ tests. A lot of those rely on you being fast at
| identifying a repeating pattern but there's only a finite
| amount of them. You can learn a few of the complex ones that
| are harder for you and bruteforce a sequence into fitting it,
| and anyone can do that.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| OK, I'm sure people will have better results on their 10th
| test than the first.
|
| So I admit you can "game" the test somewhat, but I expect
| the effect to be minor, and largest for the more
| intelligent.
|
| If there is real data on this I'd enjoy seeing it.
|
| > You can learn a few of the complex ones that are harder
| for you and bruteforce a sequence into fitting it, and
| anyone can do that.
|
| Anyone _smart_ can do that :)
| wahern wrote:
| Here's an interesting randomized controlled study that
| shows nominal improvements when retaking the Wechsler
| Adult Intelligence Scale-IV after 3 months and 6 months.
| https://sci-hub.tw/10.1080/13854046.2012.659219 There's a
| long discussion of how significant, if at all, those
| improvements were, which I only quickly glanced over.
| Apparently practice effects are well established, at
| least in principle, and there are some well known
| analytical and examination methods (albeit contended--
| part of the discussion compares and contrasts them) that
| attempt to correct for them.
|
| People in this thread talk alot about gaming multiple-
| choice tests, but when I was given the Wechsler
| Intelligence Scale for Children at age 11 I mostly
| remember alot of pictorial and physical work (puzzles,
| blocks), mental arithmetic (e.g. 2, 3, 4+ digit sums),
| verbal memorization, and other visual and oral
| _interaction_ , not much written material. And it was
| administered by a developmental psychologist in a 1:1
| setting. I have no doubt such an examination might be
| susceptible to practice effects, but I'd be surprised if
| it were as significant as for common written
| examinations. In the county (state?) I went to school the
| gifted programs required a formal Wechsler or Stanford-
| Binet exam, which I gather was a far more common
| requirement than today. Perhaps that's too expensive of a
| gateway when you have legions of parents knocking down
| the door to get their child tested for specialized
| programs, or when concerned about bias--test every kid,
| rather than relying on teachers identifying a small
| number of children for additional screening and
| examination.
| teachrdan wrote:
| As a child who was tracked into gifted classes since
| elementary school, I vividly remember whole lessons dedicated
| to strategically taking standardized tests.
|
| An example of a tricky question we learned to answer
| correctly: "1. Big is to bigger as little is to ____" is "A.
| tiny," not "B. big", because the question is looking at
| changes in intensity, not just increasing size.
|
| We were also taught general test-taking strategies like
| budgeting time for an entire test, making an educated guess
| on, or skipping & returning to, tricky questions, and so
| forth. Getting explicitly taught these skills made me perform
| better on standardized tests. And families like mine, with
| the socio-economic resources to get their kids taught these
| skills, will do better on standardized tests--including IQ
| tests--as a result.
| grugagag wrote:
| I remember during tests I'd get stuck at the hardest
| problems and stubbornly solve them only to run out of time
| on the easy questions and haphazardly answer them until the
| "pen up" was announced. At some point a teacher taught us
| how to maximize our scores resembling the strategy you
| mention and yes, it did help. We weren't smarter by any
| means, but had a better strategy to taking tests.
| [deleted]
| vixen99 wrote:
| I love the way a whole area of academic endeavour is put in its
| place. You simply haven't read the literature.
|
| Like it or not hundreds of studies have demonstrated that IQ is
| predictive of life success across many domains.
|
| https://archive.ph/PCvgk
| gumby wrote:
| The benefit of playing music is that some people find it fun.
| What's wrong with that?
| notahacker wrote:
| This. Learning music definitely makes children smarter _at
| playing music_ , which is beneficial to anyone that might enjoy
| hearing their music or performing with them, and definitely the
| bit that ought to matter to the kids themselves if they're
| taking music lessons.
|
| If you're learning/teaching music to get better at things you
| care about more than music, you've got the wrong idea...
| gentleman11 wrote:
| I don't care what a study says in my case: chess makes you
| smarter. It makes you better able to concentrate, visualize, and
| plan. Not sure if it helps you discover anagrams or find number
| patterns on an iq test but who cares
| analog31 wrote:
| A potential issue with music study is that only a certain
| fraction of kids who are given music lessons actually thrive at
| it. Many people remember being forced to take lessons and hating
| it. Others failed on multiple attempts until it finally "took."
|
| So for this reason, I'm not sure that music training is a single
| "thing" that can be analyzed without looking into how each person
| experienced it.
|
| Another possible study is to measure successful musical training
| by whether someone is actually a musician or not.
| [deleted]
| yboris wrote:
| Terrible reporting when it doesn't include a link to the
| publication:
|
| https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/s13421-020-01060-2
| odomojuli wrote:
| Doesn't surprise me but the study also seems to be just trying to
| measure academic achievement.
|
| I mean sure, I'm incredibly skeptical of "baby Mozart" approaches
| to music. Certainly starting young and practicing early goes a
| long way towards being successful in anything. Discipline in any
| field builds discipline towards others.
|
| We can go on and on about the mathematical nature of music but I
| would argue it's easier for people to do it by not thinking about
| those things and being in touch with how it feels.
|
| I'm kind of bothered that anything to do with IQ these days is
| pursued by researchers or is given a fair shake by our dear
| readers at Hacker News.
|
| Stop trying to max your kids stats. It's incredibly dehumanizing.
| I get that we all want children to have the best opportunities,
| but maybe it'd be a more equitable situation if we stopped
| reducing ourselves to a numbers game.
|
| Maybe they'll be smarter when they learn to do things they feel
| passionate about and not conditioned to perform like a trained
| monkey. We already have enough performative identity for
| careerism in high school kids. Maybe intelligence and success
| comes from knowing yourself, and not from being told to do things
| because you get points?
|
| Sorry parents! An essential part of culture and discipline of art
| and pleasure might not be inherently advantageous to your child's
| ability to fill out tests so while you're at it make sure they
| never do anything for themselves beyond the sole purpose of
| getting in somewhere just so they can realize they don't know who
| they are!
|
| Edit: Also the use of "put down the banjo". Let's talk about
| that. This is a study done in Japan and the UK. Are they even
| playing the banjo? Nothing wrong with the banjo, banjo's great.
| But specifically going with the banjo as their title and image
| lends itself to a specific tone for some readers. Not exactly
| what some people would consider "intellectual" music for vague
| reasons in class and race perhaps. I'm detecting a bias here
| against the "utility" of folk music. I wish they'd link the
| actual paper. Did the researchers give a bunch of banjos as part
| of a controlled study? I'm so sure a lot of well-to-do parents in
| Tokyo and London are feeling burned by having to keep up with the
| competitive nature among children in banjo culture.
| mywittyname wrote:
| >Stop trying to max your kids stats. It's incredibly
| dehumanizing. I get that we all want children to have the best
| opportunities, but maybe it'd be a more equitable situation if
| we stopped reducing ourselves to a numbers game.
|
| Sadly, in many respects, the only way to have a child who is at
| the top echelons is to treat them like a character in a
| lifelong RPG who needs to be constantly trained and optimized
| for such a purpose.
|
| It's not just sports either. Political & business dynasties
| exhibit this behavior, where a child's entire life is mapped
| out from years 0 to 22.
| sevensor wrote:
| Exactly.
|
| My kid is playing Tchaikovski on the piano at this very moment.
| (Well, a for-beginners version of one of his themes, but
| still.) She's happy playing it, I'm happy hearing it. If nobody
| gets any smarter, who cares? We both just got happier. _Ars
| gratia artis._
| deeblering4 wrote:
| I'm not sure an IQ test is the best metric when looking at the
| benefits of playing an instrument.
|
| Music teaches patience, dedication and rewards self-motivation
| and self-teaching, among other things.
| rubber_duck wrote:
| They mention no increase in academic performance, since those
| other traits should positively impact that as well I'm guessing
| it's not transferable.
| mattmar96 wrote:
| Another benefit besides those you listed is teamwork. Playing
| together in a band, there is no way to "game the system".
| Everyone needs to learn their part to make the overall piece
| enjoyable. It proved to me at an early age that people can come
| together to create something greater than themselves.
|
| From the original study: "-evidence indicates that engagement
| in music has no impact on people's non-music cognitive skills".
|
| My intuition says the evidence must not be comprehensive enough
| then.
| toast0 wrote:
| > Playing together in a band, there is no way to "game the
| system". Everyone needs to learn their part to make the
| overall piece enjoyable.
|
| Sure there is. I did it! Playing the bass meant very few fast
| parts like the other people (except for some nasty stuff Bach
| wrote because he hates bassists), and playing cymbals in
| marching band is way less effort than sousaphone or even a
| lightweight wind instrument.
| tarentel wrote:
| Team work isn't really a cognitive skill. I agree it can help
| with team work but you don't necessarily need to play in a
| band to learn an instrument. Also, from the actual study,
| "music may be beneficial for non-cognitive constructs in
| children such as prosocial behavior".
| mattmar96 wrote:
| Good point. Glad to see they mentioned the prosocial bit.
| Didn't catch that.
| vchak1 wrote:
| Not to mention that the main benefit of playing an instrument
| is... playing the instrument!
| mywittyname wrote:
| Unless you're a teenage boy. Then the primary benefit of
| playing the instrument is the attention of teenage girls.
| Tade0 wrote:
| I started playing the guitar when I was sixteen. My good
| friend from high school who knew the start of a single
| ballad but otherwise couldn't play got waaay more
| attention.
|
| Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that I was a
| proper nerd and he was built like a greek god.
| apoverton wrote:
| From the article:
|
| "The authors found studies with high-quality design, such as
| those which used a group of active controls - children who did
| not learn music but instead learned a different skill, such as
| dance or sports, for example - showed no effect of music
| education on cognitive or academic performance."
|
| If you can acquire the skills you mentioned doing other
| activities then it doesn't mean learning music is worthless
| just means music doesn't hold a special ability to do it
| relative to certain other activities.
| djsumdog wrote:
| Not everything needs an objective quantifiable measure of
| academic performance to make it a good thing people should know.
|
| Even if Music may not have an affect on academic performance or
| cognitive skills, it's still a fun skill. Most primary school
| programs introduce kids to basic music reading, singing, and
| simple instruments. Some kids like it and enroll in more music
| programs. Some kids say it's not for them and do other things.
| But it's nice to give kids that introduction and those options.
|
| If you like music, it can provides decades of enjoyment to learn
| how to play. It doesn't make you better than people who just
| listen to and appreciate music, but it can enhance your happiness
| to be able to pick and and fiddle around with your fiddle or
| harmonic or guitar every once in a while.
|
| What happened to learning just for the sake of learning and
| enjoyment?
| dorkwood wrote:
| My parents (who have both never played an instrument in their
| lives) signed me up for piano lessons when I was a child. I'd
| regularly be sent home with homework that I didn't know how to
| complete, no one taught me how to practice, and I'd frequently
| show up to lessons without any idea of what I was doing. I'm sure
| my parents paid a hefty fee, but I got zero value out of the
| experience.
|
| As an adult, I revisited the piano, and learned more by myself
| over several weeks than I ever did going to lessons as a child.
| The experience taught me how to practice better, and it gave me a
| stronger intuition for how the brain learns.
|
| The mistake my parents made was thinking that all the learning
| happens at the music lesson. That simply attending classes was
| enough to make me a better musician and a smarter child. I wonder
| how many other parents out there are making that same mistake
| right now.
| new_guy wrote:
| When I first started lessons (as an adult) I too thought
| learning only happened at the lesson, I thought it was enough
| to pay and turn up, in fact I was so bad/lazy I was going to
| get dropped as a student.
|
| But with constant daily practice now I'm not bad.
|
| Regardless of 'studies' like this, learning music is incredibly
| beneficial in so many different ways and every child should
| have the opportunity.
| sharker8 wrote:
| Wow first chess and now this?!?!?
| yboris wrote:
| From the conclusion of the published article:
|
| > music may be beneficial for non-cognitive constructs in
| children such as prosocial behavior and self-esteem ... [though]
| any enticing and empowering activity may improve children's well-
| being
| lhorie wrote:
| I dislike the sensationalization in the article ("Put down the
| banjo, Timmy"). The headline makes it sound like learning music
| is about as useless as sitting on your couch, as far as
| intelligence goes. But it goes on to say that the study talks
| about looking at a wide range of studies and stating that quality
| studies compare music learning with control groups that do other
| types of activities, like sports.
|
| You don't really need a PhD in psychology to figure out that any
| activity that involves putting effort over long periods of time
| will yield _some_ sort of result. Whether that actually
| translates directly to hyper-specific measurements (e.g. school
| math grades) as opposed to only "soft" long-term changes in
| behavior (e.g. developing an interest in the relationship between
| music and math, leading to e.g. an interest in software
| engineering over medicine, or an increased interest in arts, or
| whatever) seems to me like asking the wrong question.
|
| Both music and intelligence are incredibly multidimensional.
| Trying to narrowly define a supposed correlation between two very
| narrow aspects of both might be a disservice to the idea of the
| development of a well rounded individual. I feel that many people
| take these sorts of soundbite titles to heart as if they were
| little life hacks to "get ahead", rather than thinking about life
| as a holistic experience.
| [deleted]
| Juliate wrote:
| Wait, because there are people who make their children "do" music
| "to make them smart", and not for music itself (and all it
| encompasses)?
| madballster wrote:
| I feel reminded of "gym science" when it comes to a lot of
| parental development strategies for children. Everyone does it so
| there must be something to it. If controlled studies can't
| replicate any effects it does not appear to bother parents much.
|
| Why is it so hard to accept that domain transfer does not exist.
| If kids learn chess for a few years, they won't be better at
| mathematics. After five years of practicing Violin kids don't
| find learning a foreign language easier. Adding insult to injury,
| learning Latin (like many Europeans still do) contrary to common
| sense does not improve scholastic results of students when
| learning other languages.
| narag wrote:
| _Why is it so hard to accept that domain transfer does not
| exist. If kids learn chess for a few years, they won 't be
| better at mathematics._
|
| That seems like the wrong way to look at it. I taught my son
| chess and music, not because I wanted him to be smart. But
| because I want him to have fun. He was already smart. I also
| taught him many other things of different types, games and
| sports, most of them what I find fun, some of them he liked,
| some he didn't.
|
| Are chess and music useless? I don't think so. There are a
| handful of lessons to learn there that are useful for other
| domains. Is there no other way to learn them? Probably there
| are, but it's way easier to learn them as part of a fun
| activity than sitting in a class.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| Some times it's not about domain transfer. It's about learning
| how to learn, how to accomplish goals, how to manage time, and
| how to focus.
|
| Focusing on specific, easily-disproven knowledge transfer
| questions is missing the point. A child who has a decade of
| experience in structured practice, focus, and learning is going
| to be better equipped to learn future topics than a child who
| doesn't have similar levels of experience pursuing goals and
| achieving academic accomplishments.
| benrbray wrote:
| > Why is it so hard to accept that domain transfer does not
| exist.
|
| I think, because, that's simply not true. The question is
| really "to what extent does domain transfer exist, and how can
| we exploit it?"
|
| > If kids learn chess for a few years, they won't be better at
| mathematics. After five years of practicing Violin kids don't
| find learning a foreign language easier.
|
| If kids spend several years on intentional practice of chess or
| violin, they're also practicing discipline. Compared to kids
| who spend these years unfocused, I'm guessing this group will
| have an easier time learning math or French simply because they
| have better learning habits.
| EL_Loco wrote:
| Ok, I agree, but is a kid who spent several years on
| intentional chess practice better academically then a kid who
| spent several years on intentional math practice?
| benrbray wrote:
| I think that depends on a lot of factors, and I wouldn't
| want to judge one way or the other.
|
| Perhaps a kid who spends several years in chess clubs and
| really enjoys it is better off academically+socially than a
| kid forced by their parents to compete in math tournaments
| against their will, simply because the latter will have
| better emotional maturity and a support system to help them
| succeed later in life.
|
| Speaking to my own experiences, I can say my parents
| encouraged me to hyper-optimize for grades and academics,
| but that I missed out on a lot of other, irreplaceable
| experiences growing up. My parents taught me to look down
| on people who choose sports, theater, etc. over academics,
| but as an adult I see just how formative those activities
| can be when it comes to soft skills like teamwork and
| leadership.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _Adding insult to injury, learning Latin (like many Europeans
| still do) contrary to common sense does not improve scholastic
| results of students when learning other languages._
|
| I find that studying Romance languages has helped with
| understanding literary work written in English, especially when
| it comes to the etymology of words in English. Would have
| figured that studying Latin would have paid dividends at least
| in those respects.
| ergocoder wrote:
| This sounds more like correlation.
|
| The kids who gets music lessons probably come from richer
| families.
|
| The cost is rather high. Instruments, uniforms, maybe private
| tutor, space and time to practice. Irregular schedule because of
| music practice.
|
| Kids from richer families are well taught and end up being more
| competent in general.
| epx wrote:
| This only concerns tiger moms. I learnt a bit of music when 10-12
| and I am forever grateful for that, because music is a bridge
| between your senses and a lot of physics phenomena. It is a way
| to create bridges between feelings/senses and knowledge. For
| example, you can hear how a DSP filter or a modulator changes the
| original signal; you find the reasons why an engine with a
| certain number of cylinders sounds better; and so on.
|
| Having some IQ is one thing, using it is another.
| omarhaneef wrote:
| I learned to play the guitar, so I guess that is why I can
| recognize when my gear makes that horrible grinding sound.
|
| If I hadn't learned the chords to "All along the Watchtower",
| I'd probably be stranded on the side of the road right now.
| epx wrote:
| Happened to me as well. Saved at least two guys from losing a
| tire because of loose nuts, and one from losing the engine
| because it was sounding 'dry' or 'treble-y' because it was
| losing the oil.
|
| Of course, this could be the "swimmer's fallacy", perhaps I
| hear better than average (I certainly have poorer eyesight
| than average), but then again, if one gets a swimmer body but
| does not have access to a pool, won't become a swimmer.
| klft wrote:
| And If you got stranded you don't worry because you know that
| there must be some kind of way out of here.
| hackeraccount wrote:
| nice.
| fsociety wrote:
| I like this and agree with it, however they should have a follow-
| up study to measure music's affect on language skills.
| angst_ridden wrote:
| "Smart" is one of those nebulous things, until people give it a
| too-narrow definition like IQ. It's important to acknowledge that
| there are many kinds of intelligence, not all of which are pure
| logic or knowledge-gathering.
| rc_mob wrote:
| I like this definition of intelligence
|
| "Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change."
| atoav wrote:
| So a thermostat is intelligent?
| lopmotr wrote:
| No because it can't protect itself from water or run away
| from a lion. It's extremely limited in the range of
| environments it can adapt to.
| osobo wrote:
| I couldn't disagree more.
| hervature wrote:
| You must think CPU's are very intelligent
| ses1984 wrote:
| So you're saying "intelligence is the ability to eat lots
| of pizza" is a better definition?
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| I think it's a poor definition. I don't like change. I don't
| like going to new places, I like my routine. Change makes me
| uncomfortable and I'm slow to accept it. I like my usual
| meals and sleeping in my own bed. Does that make me
| unintelligent? Or does "change" need to be better defined?
| weaksauce wrote:
| i would imagine they mean a change in information not a
| change in routine. updating your mental model of the world
| based on new incoming information.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| That's why I'd like the definition to be refined. There's
| also displays of intelligence that have nothing to do
| with change - being able to do complex math in your head
| would indicate you're intelligent, but has nothing to do
| with change.
| rrobukef wrote:
| Adapting and liking are two different things. Adapting to
| change by devising ways to keep your routine needs a
| minimum of intelligence. Though I make no statement on any
| relative or absolute scale.
| username90 wrote:
| Or to create change.
| rytill wrote:
| not "the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills"?
| humblebee wrote:
| I also find that far to often people think another person is
| not smart because they don't measure up to themselves in the
| same intelligence categories. I always try to describe this as
| the categories intelligence being disturbed across sphere where
| each category is a tangential line. Due to ones own
| perspective, another may not actually look intelligent because
| they're orthogonal to ones own, and they are then perceived to
| be "stupid".
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Emotional intelligence and EQ/EIQ [1] are commonly ignored, but
| are just as necessary for functioning in society and achieving
| success.
|
| Some people seem to be really fixated on IQ over EQ, for what I
| suspect are, ironically, emotional reasons.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_intelligence
| miles2 wrote:
| Not sure the smart the post talks about here is IQ, if it is, I
| believe there is no such thing can make children's IQ higher.
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