![]() ![]() (2011) with preschoolers, participants who took part in the phonological skills program or the music program significantly improved their phonological awareness, but this improvement was not seen in the sports group. Some studies showed a stronger relation of cognitive abilities with music lessons than with other leisure activities: in an intervention trial, participants allocated to music lessons showed greater increases in full-scale IQ points than students assigned to theater education or to a passive control group ( Schellenberg, 2004). Previous studies focusing on children ( Schellenberg, 2004, 2006, 2011a) confirmed the hypothesis of a positive correlation of intelligence with the duration of musical courses, while reporting a long-term association between formal exposure to music in childhood and both IQ and academic performance. In recent years, several studies with continuous variables (e.g., duration of music training) have been carried out exhibiting the relationship between music training and overall cognitive ability both in childhood and in adulthood, making this area one of the most investigated within the field of music psychology ( Schellenberg, 2006 Wetter et al., 2009 Degé et al., 2011 Corrigall et al., 2013 Swaminathan et al., 2017). ![]() ![]() Even though the current evidence is not sufficient to establish the causality of the found effects, it can still guide future research evaluation with longitudinal data. The present results indicate that learning to play a musical instrument as part of the middle school curriculum represents a resource for preadolescent education. ![]() Furthermore, some gender differences were found for several tests and across groups in favor of females. The music children attending the third and last grade of middle school had better performance and showed the largest advantage compared to the control group on both audiovisual working memory and fluid intelligence. Significant differences between students of the music and standard curricula were found in both perceptual and cognitive domains, even when controlling for pre-existing individual differences in musical sophistication. Of these children, 163 belonged to a music curriculum within the school and 122 to a standard curriculum. At three middle schools, we tested 285 preadolescent children (aged 10–14 years) with a test and questionnaire battery including adaptive tests for visuo-spatial working memory skills (with the Jack and Jill test), fluid intelligence (with a matrix reasoning test) and music-related perceptual and memory abilities (with listening tests). Among the several kinds of music training programs implemented in the educational communities, we focused on instrumental training incorporated in the public middle school curriculum in Italy that includes both individual, group and collective (orchestral) lessons several times a week. In the delicate life period of transition from childhood to adulthood, music training might have a special role for behavioral and cognitive maturation. Music training, in all its forms, is known to have an impact on behavior both in childhood and even in aging.
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