Skip to content
PaperFren

Bilingualism

Do music lessons or a second language boost executive function?

D'Souza AA, Moradzadeh L, Wiseheart M · Cognitive research: principles and implications · 2018

Open access · cc by · source: Europe PMC

Long-trained musicians had better working memory than non-musicians across three tasks, but neither musicians nor bilinguals were better at resisting distraction, and being bilingual gave no cognitive advantage at all.

Save to libraryView originalAsk PaperFrenStudy view

Study at a glance

Design
Cross-sectional — Between-subjects 2 (musician vs non-musician) x 2 (bilingual vs monolingual) quasi-experimental comparison of young adults on three working-memory tasks and three inhibitory-control tasks, with frequentist and Bayesian ANOVAs and Holm correction
N
N=153 · 153 young adults in total; task Ns vary because the flanker task was added partway through (95 participants) and the operation span was run in a follow-up session with 54 of the original participants.
Population
Young adults recruited at Toronto universities, screened into monolingual musicians, monolingual non-musicians, bilingual musicians and bilingual non-musicians
Outcome
Working memory (backward digit span, reading span, operation span) and inhibitory control (Stroop, flanker, stop-signal reaction time)

Structured fields used in claim comparison tables when every cited study has a complete layer.

Key findings

Musicians outperformed non-musicians on all three working-memory tasks, for example recalling on average 37.2 versus 25.5 letters on reading span after adjusting for vocabulary. On inhibitory control, musicians were faster on the flanker task overall, but this looked like general speed rather than better inhibition, and there were no reliable musician effects on the Stroop or stop-signal tasks. Bilinguals did not outperform monolinguals on any task, and being both bilingual and a musician gave no extra benefit. Bayesian analyses mostly supported these conclusions.

Methodology

Young adults were grouped into four types: monolingual or bilingual, crossed with musicians (at least eight years of formal training and regular practice) or non-musicians (little or no training). Everyone completed tasks measuring working memory (holding and manipulating information) and inhibitory control (ignoring distractors or stopping a response). The groups were checked for differences in age, parental education and non-verbal IQ, and reading span was adjusted for vocabulary because it depends on English skill.

Limitations

Because people chose music lessons themselves, the study cannot show that musical training caused better working memory; people with stronger memory may be more likely to start or persist with music. Some tasks were run on only part of the sample (the operation span on a follow-up subset), which lowers power and prevented a combined multivariate analysis. Musicians and bilinguals had higher and lower vocabulary scores respectively, and the groups were defined by different criteria for each skill, so the two kinds of expertise are not matched in amount. The null bilingual result applies to young adults in one city; the authors also note a more conservative power analysis might have been preferable.

How this study connects

Role on claims

Each row is a claim on a concept or method page where this paper supports, challenges, or qualifies the statement. Roles are hand-checked — not a model guess.

Not yet placed on a claim. This paper has study layers, but no concept page yet cites it as support, challenge, or qualifier.

Related papers in this topic

Same topic cluster — not a recommendation engine.