Recently, our lab has contributed to a long-standing debate: does musical training make you smarter? There are many ways to address this somewhat controversial question, and the principal investigators on this project, Massimo Grassi and Francesca Talamini, took a very elegant one: a multi-lab study. Over 100 researchers from across the globe collected data on a very wide battery of cognitive tasks in both people with and without extensive musical training. While a correlational design, it does help answer pertinent questions, since if no difference is present between musicians and non-musicians, than causation is not likely either. The study resulted in a beautiful dataset, with nuanced results. Do musicians have better working-memory than non-musicians? Well, “maybe”, and “it depends”… We did find an effect, but it was very small. I am very happy and proud that we could contribute to this great effort from Leiden!
Full paper in Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science can be found here.
New paper: Do Musicians Have Better Short-Term Memory Than Nonmusicians? A Multilab Study
