A new study shows strong links between music and math results in reading

Music teacher Martin J. Bergee thought that if he could control his studio for the myriad of factors that could have influenced the previous ones – race, income, education, etc. – could have disproved the idea of ​​a link between students’ musical and mathematical achievements.

No. His new study, “Multilevel Models of the Relationship Between Music Achievement and Reading and Math Achievement”, published in Journal of Research in Music Education, showed statistically significant associations between the two at both individual and school district level. The fact that the study of more than 1,000 mostly middle-aged students showed no such association at the class or school level just shows how rigorously it was conceived by Bergee, a professor at the University of Kansas School of Music, and the his co-author and Ph.D. student, currently visiting professor of music education at the University of Washington, Kevin M. Weingarten.

The study has implications for school board members who consider budgets that impact music programs. It adds to the body of scientific research showing the links between music and math / reading. And in her conclusion, Bergee also suggests some specific reasons why that might be.

“There has been this notion for a long time,” Bergee said recently, “that not only are these areas interrelated, but there is a cause and effect relationship – that as you improve in an area, in itself , improve in another area. The more you study music, the better you will be in math or reading. This has always been suspect with me.

“I have always believed that the relationship was correlational and not causal. I set out to show that there are probably a number of underlying variables that are influencing performance in any academic area, in particular, things like the educational level of the family, where the student lives, whether white or non-white, and so on.

“These variables are in the article and there are a lot of them. My intention was to show that relationships are likely spurious, which means that underlying influences are the main drivers of relationships, and once those external influences, like demographics, etc. are checked, the relationship essentially disappears.

“But wait. To my surprise, not only are they not gone, but the relationships are really strong.”

Bergee “apologizes for the complexity” of the studio project, but said “it is not an easy thing to determine, because there are influences that can occur at different levels. It can be an influence at the level of the individual, but there are also the influences that can occur at the level of class, school and school district, and these are hierarchical, which implies a complicated series of analyzes.

Though he was ready to write “a completely different conclusion,” Bergee said he had thought a lot about what the results show.

The authors write that, “Perhaps musical discrimination at a more micro level – pitches, intervals, meters – shares a cognitive basis with certain patterns of discrimination in speech. Likewise, perhaps the more macro abilities of central modal and tonal discrimination share some spaces with aspects of mathematical cognition. … The results of the present study … indicate at least the possibility. “

In a recent interview, Bergee said: “Based on the findings, the point we have tried to make is that there may be, and probably are, general learning processes that underpin all academic achievement, regardless of area. Music achievement, math results, reading achievement: there are probably more generalized thought processes that are applied to any of these areas.

“Therefore, if your goal is to educate the person, develop the person’s mind, you have to educate the whole person. In other words, learning may not be as modular as it is often thought to be.”

It involves more than introducing children to subjects, Bergee said, “Develop them in these subjects. See the learning is happening. See the development.” a child’s math or reading scores.

“It wouldn’t be impossible, but it would be really hard to do a truly definitive study,” Bergee said. “My bias is that it wouldn’t show a strong effect, but that’s what I said about this study! I don’t really know.”

But it can say this: “If you want the mind of a young person, or any person, to develop, then you have to develop it in all the ways it can be developed. You cannot sacrifice some ways of learning to other ways of learning. any reason, be it financial or social. ”