April 2016 MIMM Journal Club

In December 2013, my colleagues and I published the null results of two randomized trials investigating effects of brief parent-child music enrichment on preschoolers’ cognitive skills (Mehr et al., 2013). Fully aware of the limitations of our studies, including, of course, that a failure to reject the null hypothesis does not imply evidence in support of the null hypothesis, we conservatively titled the paper “Two randomized trials reveal no consistent evidence for nonmusical cognitive benefits of brief preschool music enrichment.” In the discussion we wrote over 1000 words on why we might not have detected a positive effect, should one exist (pp. 9–10). Nonetheless, a media firestorm ensued, in which press reports claimed not only that our findings affirmed the null hypothesis, but also that they implied a broader conclusion: music lessons confer no cognitive benefits whatsoever (e.g., regardless of child age or training content, duration, or intensity). For instance, the Times of London reported, “Academic benefits of music ‘a myth’” (Devlin, 2013); a Boston Globe headline read, “Music doesn’t make you smarter, Harvard study finds” (Johnson, 2013); and TIME reported “Music can soothe the soul and speed along creativity, but it won’t, according to researchers from Harvard, boost intelligence” (Sifferlin, 2013). These headlines appeared alongside 100 other reports from over 40 countries (partial listing: https://goo.gl/pCwvqG), despite efforts to clarify our findings via numerous interviews, a live Q&A on Reddit, and a New York Times op-ed (Mehr, 2013).

 

Department of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour

McMaster University

1280 Main Street West
Hamilton, Ontario, L8S 4L8

Phone: 905-525-9140 ext. 27114
Email: marshse@mcmaster.ca
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