Rauscher and Shaw found that preschoolers who received music lessons showed greater spatial and temporal reasoning abilities and performed better on assembly tasks than their peers who did not participate in music lessons, including those who received computer lessons over the same period. A study in Downey, California, showed that first graders who had at least one year of music instruction were reading one grade level above classmates who did not participate in music lessons; students with two or more years of music instruction scored even higher. Many music educators believe that exposing a child to music as early as possible is the best way to encourage lifelong involvement with music, and some studies suggest that musicians, whether by profession or passion alone, tend to show higher aptitude in academic areas throughout their lives. Rauscher and colleagues found that children who began music instruction at age five showed more advanced spatial reasoning abilities than peers who did not receive instruction, but the test scores of children who began music instruction after age seven did not differ from peers with no musical instruction. read more

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