Exploring the foundations of the relationship between music training and mathematical cognition

Three empirical studies explored the relationship between music training and mathematical cognition. Earlier studies on this topic have been limited by the use of blunt and imprecise assessments of mathematical reasoning and the choice of experimental comparison groups. The current work built on previous findings by focusing on a set of early developing systems at the foundation of mathematical cognition, chosen in part for their relevance to music training, and then testing for associations between music training and these systems. These cognitive systems support mature human reasoning about objects and the geometrical relationships among them, number, the mapping between number and spatial extent, and the use of geometric maps. Children pursuing mild, moderate, and highly intensive music training completed the tasks, as did children pursuing training in sports, dance, and other art forms and children pursuing limited amounts of a variety of extracurricular activities. After controlling for intelligence, socio-economic status, and sex, moderate and highly intensive music training was associated with superior performance on tasks tapping a broad range of geometrical reasoning abilities. This was manifest in higher performance of children pursuing such training and in significant residual correlations between duration of such training and tasks tapping geometrical reasoning. No such association was found with mildly intensive music training. Intensive dance training was associated with high performance on the same geometrical tasks and with the ability to represent several visual objects in parallel. Intensive visual art training was associated with high performance on a test of geometrical reasoning about visual forms and the test of representing multiple objects in parallel. Intensive theater and writing training were associated with inferior geometrical and numerical abilities relative to students who intensively pursue other art forms. No associations were found with sports training. These results suggest that the oft-reported association between music training and mathematical ability may be grounded in a specific association with geometrical reasoning, and that training in the arts manifests diverse patterns of association with abilities at the foundation of mathematics.