Executive Function

Working Memory and Music

Working memory is an important component of executive functioning, and its role in music processing has been widely researched. Learning to play a musical instrument places heavy demands on working memory because of the necessity of processing visual, auditory, and tactile cues simultaneously. The effort involved in processing these cues may in turn have a spillover effect on other tasks. This spillover may account for the positive influence of musical training on intellectual functioning. As working memory is required for any type of complex activity, ranging from language comprehension to problem-solving skills, musical training may have far-reaching effects.

Short-Term and Long-Term Effects of Musical Exposure

Studies show that short- and long-term musical engagement has a range of effects on nonmusical functioning. However, the effects of music occur for different reasons after short-term and long-term exposure or training. For example, musical training in children and adolescents over long periods enhances their ability to recall words, and musicians may have an edge over nonmusicians in storing auditory information due to improved working memory operations. Musicians also perform better than nonmusicians on pitch comparison tasks. Neuropsychological evidence suggests that music is initially processed in the right hemisphere, but as experience with music grows, music [Page 435]processing shifts to the left hemisphere where language is processed. Consistent with this possibility, it has been proposed that musicians are better than nonmusicians at learning foreign languages.

These long-term benefits have been explained as a result of a transfer of training, or cognitive transfer. Long periods of formalized training make it easier for a practicing musician to transfer problem-solving skills from one domain to the other, an ability that helps when cognitive mechanisms such as syntactic processing overlap for both language and music. Long-term music training is also associated with enhancements in other domains, such as mathematics, sensitivity to emotional prosody, temporal-order processing, and spatial-temporal skills, but much of the evidence is based on correlational data, which makes it difficult to draw causal inferences. Such enhancements may be preexisting in individuals who gravitate toward music. True experiments (random assignment to music and control groups) are rare, but suggest that the long-term benefits of music training may be both modest and broad (a small increase in IQ).

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