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DOES LISTENING TO MUSIC MAKE YOU SMARTER? !1
Does Listening to Music Make You Smarter?
Long Beach City College
DOES LISTENING TO MUSIC MAKE YOU SMARTER? !2
INTRODUCTION:
Does Listening to Music Make You Smarter?
The Beatles. Led Zeppelin. Sonic Youth. Katy Perry. Music! These are a few artists who
have definitely influenced my life for the better. I can honestly say that I would not be here today
if it weren’t for music— it has literally saved my life. Music is my knight and shining armor
when I am a damsel in distress. It pulls me out of my cloud of darkness and brings me to the
light. Music is everywhere and anywhere. It is the catchy jingle you find yourself singing
because of a commercial, the instrumental you hear in an elevator, and all the sacred albums you
listened to in your youth.
Music is powerful. It influences how you feel emotionally, spiritually, and physically and
the ways in which you perceive the world. The lyrics of songs provide powerful messages and
perspectives, melodies bless us with beautiful ambiance or pure Rock and Roll, and the
combination of the two does wonders. Logically, music that sounds “happy” will make you
happy— and “sad” music makes you sad. Despite music’s obvious implications, there is
definitely a realm of benefits that music provides that we should explore.
According to an EMedExpert article called “How Music Affects Us and Promotes
Health” music reduces blood pressure, releases endorphins to counteract pain, and creates a
harmonious emotional experience that releases immune-boosting hormones to reduce illness. In
addition, music has been proven to enhance body coordination and athletic performance. When
you are exercising, doesn’t the perfect upbeat song motivate and lengthen your workout? Lastly,
music relieves depression, reduces emotional distress, and increases self-esteem (“How Music,”
2016).
DOES LISTENING TO MUSIC MAKE YOU SMARTER? !3
Being around music, listening to music, music therapy, making music, or simply learning
how to play a musical instrument has a plethora of positive benefits. All of these benefits are
very promising to our mental, emotional, and spiritual health—but, if these simple acts can do
wonders for us, it is crucial that we take every opportunity to explore every single possible effect
of music. Therefore, I am curious to see how exactly music influences us cognitively in order to
enhance our intelligence. Does listening to music or learning to play a musical instrument set-up
an individual to learn better? Does it make us smarter? Does it improve our working memory and
any of our skills to further improve our ability to process information and learn?
These simple questions may be the catalyst to make it a priority to implement music in all
educational settings for student success. If music can cure my depression, make me run faster on
the treadmill, and somehow improve my learning— music is medicine. Musicians want to heal
with the world with music, so why can’t scientists do the same?
ARTICLE REVIEWS:
Article One
Dawn C. Rose, Alice Jones-Bartoli, and Pamela H. Heaton conducted a study titled, “A
Study of Cognitive and Behavioral Transfer Effects Associated with Children Learning Musical
Instruments for the First Year Over One Academic Year” (2015). My research questions whether
or not listening to music or playing a musical instrument makes us smarter. This study
investigates the transfer effects of musical education and the indirect effects that come with it.
Learning music has been defined as a “superskill” that lends us “transfer” and “far transfer”
effects. The scientists have defined transfer effects as direct skills from music education, and far
DOES LISTENING TO MUSIC MAKE YOU SMARTER? !4
transfer effects for IQ, mathematics, and literature. Rose, Jones-Bartoli, and Heaton took action
to test music education’s effects specifically on behavioral visuo and psycho-motor skills, IQ,
and memory.
The scientists of this study were aware of many concepts regarding intelligence, memory,
and visuo/motor skills before the study. These same facts help answer my question. For example,
musical training before the age of 7 has enhanced visuo/motor abilities. Musical learning has
increased memory, attention span, and the mastering of skills because musical education is like
school itself, therefore heightening IQ levels (Heaton, Jones-Bartoli, and Rose, 2015).
In order to investigate this, the study took a holistic approach of integrating musical
lessons in 38 children between the ages of 7 to 9 years old over one academic school year. The
study had 21 girls and 17 males who attended either a state or independent school with an
average IQ of 106. The results of the study were split between Time 1, September 2013, and
Time 2, June 2014. The students were split into two groups— the More Music Group (MMG)
and the Less Music Group (LMG). 20 participants had an extra hour of musical lessons per week
while the other 18 received less “…as part of their schools statutory curricular provision” (56).
T-tests and split plot profile techniques for simple RM ANOVA tests were used to
evaluate the MMG and LMG groups for Time 1 and Time 2. The amount of hours per week each
group practiced music was taken into consideration for these tests. In order to asses the student’s
level of music aptitude the study used Gordon’s Primary Measure of Musical Audiation. This is
a test that calculates, diagnoses, and measures an individual’s music potential. It was
conducted during Time 1 and Time 2. The resulting tests showed that their musical aptitudes
increased overtime with a significant main effect. For individuals with no music training, their
composite t score, Time 1 and Time 2 had a t-test statistic of t(18)-4.561 with a p-value of
DOES LISTENING TO MUSIC MAKE YOU SMARTER? !5
<.001. For their tonal measure, Time 1 and Time 2 had a t-test statistic of t(17)-2.925 with a
p-value of .009. For their rhythm score, Time 1 and Time 2 had a t-test statistic of
t(18)-3.699 with a p-value of .002. For individuals who had music training, their composite
t score, Time 1 and Time 2 had a t-test statistic of t(17)-2.925 with a p-value of .009. For
their tonal measure, Time 1 and Time 2 had a t-test statistic of no score. For their rhythm
score, Time 1 and Time 2 had a t-test statistic of t(17)-2.132 with a p-value of .048 (Heaton,
Jones-Bartoli, and Rose, 2015).
Memory was tested using The Children’s Memory Scale (Cohen, 1997). The Children’s
Memory Scale tested their memory through word list learning, word list recall, reading numbers
forward, and backwards, number totals, and sequences. In all realms of memory, using the split
plot profile tests of the RM ANOVA showed that the scores of the music education group in fact
increased over a significant amount of time.
The Movement ABC test was used to investigate the visuo/motor skills. The students
were tested on their preferred hand placing pegs, non-preferred hand placing pegs, threading lace
using both hands, the preferred hand of drawing a tail, catching a ball, throwing a bean bag to a
target, preferred leg balance, and a non-preferred leg balance.
The Weschler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence (WASI; Weschler, 1999) was conducted
in order to asses “…data on vocabulary, matrix reasoning (non-verbal skills), block design
(spatial ability) and similarities (semantic processing)” (Heaton, Jones-Bartoli, and Rose, 2015,
p. 55). The vocabulary and matrix reasoning of the MMG were more favorable than the LMG.
The 4 factors of the WASI when tested showed that there was a significant overall effect of these
measures over time with “F(3,35)=3.718, p=.014.” The results of the WASI, Children’s Memory
DOES LISTENING TO MUSIC MAKE YOU SMARTER? !6
Scale, Movement ABC, and GPMMA tests coincides with my question of whether or not music
improves our skills to learn/makes us smarter.
In conclusion, the effects of musical training/education on the 38 participants of this
study show an increased ability to aim and catch, greater advantages for the MMG than the
LMG, and an increased aptitude for non-verbal and spatial reasoning after just one year of
musical training. The study has proven that music makes you smarter by showing the effects of
an “…change over time associated with specialist musical training” (Heaton, Jones-Bartoli,
and Rose, 2015, p. 57).
Article Two
Lidia Suarez, Shalini Elangovan, and Agnes Au are scientists from Singapore’s James
Cook University, and they conducted the study “Cross-sectional Study on the Relationship
Between Music Training and Working Memory in Adults.” Unlike the previous article, this
article investigates musical training’s transfer effects on adults, rather than children. As common
sense goes, the better you are at memorizing, the smarter you become because of the information
you can process and maintain. This study tests adult musicians and non-musicians for specific
aspects of working memory (WM). As I have said, I wish to explore musical training/music’s
effects on our cognitive functioning. Similarly, the scientists of this study align with my research
since they hypothesized that “…musicians [would] outperform non-musicians in WM
tasks” (Suarez, Elangovan, & Au, 2015).
Musical training studies have found that music allows for an enhanced attention span, IQ,
auditory, motor, verbal, and visuospatial abilities. The study specifically peers into our working
memory (WM) which is “…defined as a limited-capacity system for temporary storage and
manipulation of information for complex tasks such as comprehension, learning, and
DOES LISTENING TO MUSIC MAKE YOU SMARTER? !7
reasoning” (Goldstein, 2008, p. 410). In order to correctly asses our WM, the study conducted
tests on the WM model by Baddeley (2000). It focuses on the central executive, phonological
loop, visuospatial sketchpad, and the episodic buffer as domains for assessment.
In order to asses the 4 domains of the WM model, the study assesses 54 participants.
Each participant has no disabilities and were split into a musician group of 24 and a nonmusician
group of 30. In order to be classified as a musician, the participant had to have had 5
years or more of musical training, with most of them starting around 8 years old. The musicians
had 4 males, 20 females, and the non-musicians had 7 males and 23 females. The participants
were similar in age, education, and IQ levels, but differed in family income.
The study was split into two parts. The first session was an experiment using the E-prime
2.0 to assign six WM tasks on the participants. 8 versions of the program were created for
variance and practice tests were enabled to elicit a full understanding of the program.
The central executive tests for tasks on perceptual skills, speed, and attentional control. In
order to asses the features of the central executive, the program allowed for two tasks. The first
was a digit-symbol coding task in which they had to match numbers with symbols as quickly and
correctly as they could in a booklet with 180 digits. After 2 minutes, the participants results were
graded based on how many symbols they got correct. The second was a backward digit-spin task
in which they had to write the reversed order of numbers called out. This assessment allows us to
see if musical training affects our level of ability to memorize information, retain it, and also
manipulate it for our own use.
The visuospatial sketchpad holds visuospatial information, such as musicians being able
to translate musical notes as sequential finger movements. The visuospatial sketchpad was used
for the static matrix span tasks and the dynamic matrix span task. The static matrix span task was
DOES LISTENING TO MUSIC MAKE YOU SMARTER? !8
used to test memory capacity by making the participants draw a mark wherever they saw lines
appear for 10,000ms on a gray matrix. The dynamic matrix span task was lighting up red lines on
a matrix for 2,000ms one by one, and having the participants reiterate what lines turned red and
the order in which they changed.
The phonological loop is used to asses the storage of information and re-reciting that
same information, auditory memory capacity, articulatory rehearsal, and ability to memorize new
string sounds. The study shows that music training enhances phonological memory through the
memorization of words and non-words, vocabulary tests, and the forward digit span (Au,
Elangovan, & Suarez, 2015) The phonological loop was tested by making the participants
reiterate the same sequence of numbers they heard on paper on multiple successive trials through
a forward digit span task. In addition, a non-word recognition tasks was assigned in which they
assessed phonological memory and ability to learn new phonological forms. To do so,
participants were played a list of “sounds”/non-words and then they replayed them again. As the
repetition was going on, many non-words not previously played were inserted. The participants
had to decide whether each non-word was previously played.
The episodic buffer is a combination of our long term memory (LTM), visuospatial
sketchpad, and the phonological loop. In previous studies within the episode buffer, musical
training has been “…associated with the capacity to rapidly scan visual information, [have]
kinesthetic abilities, and mentally transform images of spatial patterns” and require “…
psychomotor speed, hand-eye coordination, spatial processing, mental manipulation of
information, and inhibitory control of irrelevant stimuli because these are processes practiced
during music learning” (Hayward & Gromko, 2009, p. 26-36).
DOES LISTENING TO MUSIC MAKE YOU SMARTER? !9
The second session featured the The Advanced Measures of Music Audition
(AMMA; Gordon, 1989) and was used to assess and measure each individual’s music
aptitude. The AMMA showed that the musicians scored significantly higher “(M-61.30,
SD= 7.69)” compared to the “(M=51.10, SD=8.12)” non-musicians. The American National
Adult Reading Test (AMNART) was used to measure verbal IQ. It was administered along
with a demographic questionnaire to asses individual demographics because the study
wanted to make sure that the musicians and non-musicians did not differ in age, IQ, and
years of education.
As a result, the study found that music training is positively correlated with improved
benefits compared to the non-musicians. The musicians scored significantly better in the WM
tasks of the digit-symbol coding task, backward digit span tasks, and dynamic matrix span task.
The results show that musicians had an “…enhanced attention, visual-motor coordination, visual
scanning ability, visual processing speed, spatial memory, and information manipulation skills”
compared to the non-musicians which as a result, proves musicians to have better cognitive
functioning, working memory, and skills to further enhance learning and the processing of
information (Au, Elangovan, & Suarez, 2015, p. 44).
Article Three
Zekerya Batur of Usak University in Turkey conducted the study, “The Contribution of
Music to the Fluent Writing Skills: Mayaz Technique” (2016) in order to asses how listening to
music in a classroom environment influences writing skills. Does playing music in a classroom
environment inspire

Please Section each PART accordingly & be organized, so that each
section is complete. Thank you
This is a psychology research proposal,
Select a topic of interest and do a research proposal on that topic and
develop a question
-Socializing and its benefits on mental health.
-Social isolation and mental health
PART 1
This first part of your project proposal will consist of the following sections:
● Introduction: (1pg) First, you’ll be picking a topic of interest and turning it
into an appropriate research question. You can pick any topic as the basis of
your research, as long as it relates to psychology in some way. (suggested
topics above) The first section of your proposal will explain your research
question, including an argument for why this topic is relevant and deserves to
be studied. You should be spending some time clearly discussing what,
exactly, you’d like to learn with your research project, as well as what you
already know going into it. You should also be explaining the ideas
embedded in your research question–some definitions may be necessary to
understand what you’re asking.
● Article Reviews: ( 2pg per article) Once you have an appropriate question,
you’ll then be tracking down at least 2 scholarly, empirical articles
(JSTOR/EBSCO) that will inform you about the topic and help you to develop
a tentative answer to your question–what will ultimately become your
hypothesis. For each article you’ll be summarizing the main ideas of the
study, the questions the researcher were trying to answer, the methods they
used to conduct the study, and the results they obtained.
○ Motivation — Explain the questions and hypotheses that the
researchers were trying to evaluate. What did they know going into
the study, and what did they want to learn? If they had a specific
hypothesis (or hypotheses), you should be able to explain what it
was, and why they made that prediction.
○ Methods — Discuss how they conducted the study. Who were
their participants? What variables were they focusing on, and how
were these variables measured (or manipulated, if it was an
experiment)? The reader should have a pretty good idea what
would have happened had they participated in the study.
○ Findings — State the results that were obtained, and then discuss
them: what do they mean, and how do these findings relate to the
initial ideas the researchers had–their research questions and
hypotheses?
● References: A single page listing publication information for the articles
you’ve selected (in APA style) .
● Indicate what sources you’re discussing in the text of your paper and
references
This second part of your project proposal is building on, and adding to, the first part. In
the first part, you introduced your research question and some relevant empirical
research. In the second part, you’ll be thinking more critically about the evidence and
how it relates to your question, and ultimately developing a new hypothesis that can be
tested (in Part 3).
PART 2
Part 2 will be added to your original Part 1. Specifically, after your article reviews, you’ll
be adding the following sections:
● Limitations (1pg)
○ Here you’ll be discussing some of the potential weaknesses of the studies.
You should make reference to specific validities (internal, external,
construct, and statistical), and should address at least two validities for
each article. What might be some of the weaknesses in terms of how the
studies were conducted? Be as specific as possible.
○ Additionally, you should be considering how these weaknesses may have
affected the findings in the study. If there was a problem with external
validity, for instance, would this render the findings invalid, or just mean
that we might be limited in terms of how we apply them? What would this
mean for how we should interpret the results? Again, try to be as specific
as possible.
○ Lastly, considering what you just said, what steps might be taken to
correct for these weaknesses? If you were to replicate this study, is there
any way that you could improve its validity?
○ For this section, you can build on any critiques that the authors might have
raised about their own studies, though you should still discuss them in the
manner outlined above. (And make sure you understand their critique, if
you’re going to use it.)
● Synthesis (1pg)
○ In this section, you’ll be considering how/whether each of the findings from
the studies you’ve reviewed fit together, and how they relate to your
research question.
○ Keeping your original research question in mind, what information does
each study contribute? Does it answer your research question outright, or
provide more of a step in the direction of an answer?
○ Considering that each of the studies had its own goals and questions, are
there any areas in which the findings of the different articles reinforce each
other? Do you find any contradictions among the findings? Make sure to
explain why you see these findings as being similar/different. Especially
for any differences, discuss how you understand these comparisons–for
instance, do you think one of the studies presents a stronger form of
evidence than another?
○ Considering what was found in each of the articles (and not forgetting the
limitations you just identified), what’s the bigger picture to be made? In what
ways do specific findings support each other, or conflict with each other? How
has reading about this research changed your thinking behind this issue (i.e.,
your theory)?
● Hypothesis (1pg)
○ Finally, you’ll be proposing a new, as-yet-untested hypothesis.
Considering the question that you started with and the evidence that
you’ve found, what is a potential answer to your research question? This
should be a clear, specific prediction that you’re making, and in the form of
a statement (not a new question). You should clearly state your
hypothesis, explaining as necessary, and provide a clear argument for
it–what evidence led you to this conclusion?
○ Keep in mind this should be a new idea, and one which you don’t actually
know whether it’s true or not. If there’s already a clearly and consistently
demonstrated answer to your original question in the literature, you may
need to consider ways to expand your hypothesis.
○ After considering the past research and how it relates to your research question,
you should be proposing a new, testable idea–your hypothesis. For many
students, this will be a proposed answer to the research question you started
with. For some–if your research question has been pretty thoroughly answered
by the past research–this will mean posing a slightly different question that hasn’t
already been answered before developing a hypothesis.
○ Either way, you’ll be clearly stating your hypothesis, and then explaining your
thinking–what is the evidence that leads you to that idea?
PART 3
Part III will again build on and add to Part II, coming after the Hypothesis section.
We’re now on to Part 3 of your Project Proposal. This will consist of:
● Parts 1 & 2 this now constitutes your Introduction
● The new part of Part 3 will be your Methods Section this is where you outline
your plan for a study to test your hypothesis
○ Design , stating what kind of study this is, and what variables you’ll
be focusing on
○ Participants, explaining who your participants would be and how
you’d find them–what is your sampling strategy?
○ Your Measures, explaining how you’d go about measuring any
relevant variables.
■ Make sure to include any actual materials as an
appendix
■ When coming up with your measures, you don’t
necessarily have to reinvent the wheel. If you have
access to a previously developed questionnaire, for
instance, feel free to use it as one of your measures.
However, make sure to give appropriate credit (citation
and reference), and to include the actual materials
○ The Procedures you would follow to conduct the study
○ Your plan for your Data Analysis –what means (and standard
deviations SDs) would you be calculating, and what correlations
and/or differences would you be evaluating?
● Your References page will come after this–this should be the same as from
Part 1, but make sure to update it if you’ve added or changed any sources.
● Any Appendices come at the end. This will include:
○ Figure out a Budget for your project: for the materials and
procedures you’ll be employing, how much will this study cost to
complete? You have a limit of $5000 available for the study, but
I’m also gifting you (if you need them) a lab space, a volunteer
research assistant, and access to an fMRI machine at no cost.
(Any additional research assistants are $15/hr.)
○ An ethical statement. As part of your proposal, you’ll also need
to consider the ethical implications of your study. Specifically,
thinking about the main ethical principles of beneficence, justice,
and respect for persons, do you foresee any problems, and if so,
what steps have you taken to address them? Depending on your
study, you may need to obtain a more explicit form of consent
from your participants; if you think it’s necessary, you should be
including a consent form.
○ –feel free to modify this however you like.)
○ If you have any materials for your study (such as questionnaires or
stimuli), make sure to include them here.