Review: The role of music in cognitive development

Abstract

The amount of literature in the field of music cognition is rising (Hallam et al., 2016), and there are numerous studies that show both behavioral (e.g., Bilhartz et al., 1999; Patel, 2010) and neurocognitive (e.g., Altenmüller et al., 2000) results that emphasize the role of music in cognitive development. However, there has been little effort to conduct a comprehensive review on this topic. The aim of this study is to provide a systematic review of the role music can have in cognitive development. The review was conducted by utilizing search results on Google Scholar for the period 1990–2022 with the keywords “music” and “cognitive development” included in the title. After removing results that did not match the review criteria, 30 studies were included. This systematic review revealed only five studies where no effects of music on cognitive development were reported. The remaining 25 studies showed that music can provide a variety of cognitive benefits, including the development of spatial and motor skills (12), verbal skills (10), memory (4), executive functioning (5), problem-solving (5), and sensory skills (2). Seven studies concluded that music can improve cognitive development in general, while six studies reported that music can be beneficial in assisting with cognitive impairments. To current knowledge, there hasn’t been a review covering such a wide scope of cognitive aspects regarding music. The present review could potentially help researchers come to a more comprehensive understanding of the results in the field. So far, there have been many contradictory results and methodological misalignments. This review shows what methodologies have been used, what theoretical approaches these methodologies relied on, and what were their conclusions. It should be noted that the design quality of studies in this field is negatively related to effect size (Sala & Gobet, 2017). The conclusions of this review could have potentially been skewed by the positive-result bias, which could explain why so few studies showed no effects. The review, in its current state, is limited to studies that specifically explore cognitive development. Further work will include studies that mention “cognitive abilities” and “cognitive skills” in their titles. Insights from such a broad review could be used to potentially improve music practices in preschool education by enhancing the importance of music in cognitive development.