Study results were made available to Kindermusik in May, 2005. The study was conducted by Adam Winsler Ph.D and graduate student Lesley Ducenne in the Department of Psychology at George Mason University.
"Four-year-old children who had been exposed to Kindermusik for longer periods of time are better off in terms of self-control—namely a child's ability to plan, guide, and control their own behavior—than similar children with less Kindermusik history."

"These experiences, stop-go, high-low, fast-slow, short-long, and loud-soft, whereby children's motor behavior is guided by the music, appear to be good exercise for young children's emerging self-regulatory skills."More about the study. The 15-month study included 91 children between the ages of 3 and 5 who were split into three groups: 23 students currently enrolled in Kindermusik, 19 students previously enrolled in Kindermusik, and 49 students of similar family backgrounds from local preschools who had never had Kindermusik.

The children were observed doing a variety of tasks that required self-control such as slowing down their motor behavior, delaying their gratification, refraining from touching attractive but forbidden toys, quietly whispering, and compliance with instructions to initiate or stop certain behaviors. Parents also completed surveys.

The study, supervised by Adam Winsler, Ph.D, Applied Developmental Psychology in the Department of Psychology at George Mason University, will likely be presented at national conferences and published later this year.
http://www.kindermusik.com/eNews/eNotesSept2005.asp

 

Study description: The study was conducted between September 1997 and May 1998 by Terry D. Bilhartz, professor of history; Rick A. Bruhn, professor of education; and Judith E. Olson, director of the Learning Assistance Center at Sam Houston State University, Huntsville, Texas, USA.

A total of 66 children ages four to six years completed the study and were tested, half receiving no additional music instruction (called the control group) and the other half (called the experimental group) participating in a Kindermusik for the Young Child Year 1 Pilot Program. One third of the children in both the control and the experimental groups attended Head Start Programs, while the remaining two-thirds in each group were pre-schoolers who lived in middle and upper income households.

At the end of the study, children of parents or guardians in the experiment group who met "low" compliance standards improved the equivalent of an increase from the 50th percentile on a standardized intelligence test to above the 78th percentile. Students whose parents or guardians met "satisfactory" compliance standards jumped on the average from the 50th percentile to above the 87th percentile.

Key messages:
Strong correlations were found between musical abilities in young children, particularly the ability to match vocal pitches and reproduce rhythmic patterns, and abstract reasoning abilities. These findings support the theories formulated by Gordon Shaw, Francis Rauscher and other researchers who have argued that early music instruction improves intelligence, specifically producing cognitive benefits in the area of spatial-temporal reasoning.
An equally compelling finding is the indication that the level of parental involvement in music training can greatly affect the amount of improvement in intelligence.

The conclusions of the study support the "nurture" side of the argument in the on-going debate over whether intelligence is solely DNA determined and static, or whether it can be enhanced through life experiences.

The study also showed that parental time spent with a child is a more important factor in predicting intelligence test success than such factors as single parent households, poverty, low parental education levels, and ethnic minority status.

The research community has taken special interest in the study's results. An article on the research group's findings has been accepted for publication in a future issue of the Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology. http://www.kindermusik.com/new/samHoustan.asp© Kindermusik International  1998, 2005