Adult musicians versus non-musicians

We saw that young musicians tend to be more intelligent than young non-musicians.

Although we can’t conclude that music training boosts intelligence, the results are indeed interesting.

And there is a particular result we didn’t stress so much: the fact that the relationship seems weaker when the age of the participant is older.

In brief, it may be possible that music training boosts intelligence but the results gathered on the effects of music training across various age groups seem mixed at best.

At a young age, music training seems to have a clear relationship with intelligence. At an older age, the results seem more confused. This last result is problematic because adult musicians have many and many years of music training on their shoulders so here, after many years we should clearly see an effect of the music training on intelligence. In contrast, the effect of music training seems larger at a much smaller age.

References

• Brandler, S., & Rammsayer, T. H. (2003). Differences in mental abilities between musicians and non-musicians. Psychology of Music, 31(2), 123-138.
• Criscuolo, A., Bonetti, L., Särkämö, T., Kliuchko, M., & Brattico, E. (2019). On the association between musical training, intelligence and executive functions in adulthood. Frontiers in Psychology, 10, 1704.