Effect of Music Lessons on the Intelligence of Children

• Activity Number: 362
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Tuesday, August 11, 2015 : 10:30 AM to 12:20 PM
• Sponsor: Social Statistics Section
• Author(s): Prantik Bera*
• Keywords: intelligence ; IQ ; music ; non parametric

Abstract

There are several causes that may influence the intelligence of a person like age, sex, health etc. It is interesting to think that music can also be a possible factor affecting intelligence. The aim of this project is to check the effect of music in the growth of IQ. In this project, we have worked with a secondary data set. 132 children of age 6-7 years were divided into two groups randomly of which one group was given music lessons and the other one was not. The main aim is to compare the increase in IQ scores for the two groups.This testing has been done using non-parametric tests and we have found that the children in the music group show more growth in IQ compared to the other group. Not only this result is interesting, it is also seen that music has more effect in increasing the IQ of girls than boys. We have also observed that the processing speed and the ability of verbal comprehension of children who were given music lessons have significantly increased than the others. This analysis has been done on children aged 6-7 years only and hence we cannot surely conclude the same for other age groups.