Music lessons enhance IQ - Essay Example

Music lessons enhance IQ The of the research report Glenn Schellenberg is from of Toronto. The report seeks to establish whether music lessons enhance the IQ. The report is the first to focus on the impact music lessons have on IQ. A large sample of participants is involved comprising of 144 small children. The research report focus on whether music lessons have collateral assistance that extend to non-musical areas of cognition (Schellenberg 511). In the research, direct test hypothesis was done that music lesson boosts the IQ (Schellenberg 512).

The investigation included random assignment of a large sample of children to four different groups. In the four different groups, two received music lessons for a year while the other two that acted as a control group received lessons from activity not related to music (drama) or no lessons (Schellenberg 512). The Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Third (WISC-III) edition was used as a primary outcome measure (Schellenberg 512). The other tools that were used in the measure were Kaufman Test of Education Achievement (K-TEA) and the Parent Rating Scale of Behavioural Assessment System for Children (BASC) (Schellenberg 512).

Measures used in analysis included full-scale IQ, the 4 index scores, and the 12 subsets (Schellenberg 512).The research generated various results that positively correlated with the hypothesis. Analysis of the results was done through descriptive statistics. Increase in the full-scale IQ was noted from the results. The four groups exhibited significant increases in IQ (Schellenberg 512). The different groups exhibited similar increases even after being exposed to different teaching. Moreover, two control groups depicted same increase.

However, the music group illustrated more substantial increases in full-scale as compared to the control group (Schellenberg 512). Analysis of the variance scores proved that increases on the four index scores was significantly larger in the music group as compared to the control groups. Some index scores such as freedom from distractibility and processing speed showed more increase. However, the music group showed the same result across indices. Actually, the music group showed a greater increase in 10 subsets as compared to the control groups (Schellenberg 513).

On the other hand, there was no notable difference between groups in pre- to postlesson improvement. This was the case after examinations of scores on the five subsets of the K-TEA (Schellenberg 513). However, the music group showed a significant increase in all the subsets. Hence, the results act as prove that music lessons play an important role in the intellectual development. However, different results were exhibited using BASC in social behaviour. The drama groups exhibited a change in adaptive social behaviour as compared to music groups that showed no change (Schellenberg 513).

Hence, drama had a significant effect on social behaviour and no effect on IQ. The research report had one major limitation. The research report has failed to offer direction on future research. The only advantage is that it relied on other author’s views in substantiating the claim.Works CitedSchellenberg, Glenn. “Research Report Music Lessons Enhance IQ.” American Psychological Society 15.8 (2004): 511-113. Print.