A music-based cognitive training program using animated cartoons has shown great success in improving verbal intelligence of pre-schoolers after only four weeks of use, according to a new study published in the journal Psychological Science.
Researchers from York University in Ontario worked with 48 children between the ages of four and six. Half of the children watched a special music-based cartoon that taught motor, perceptual and cognitive tasks, along with musical concepts. The other group received training in visual arts, learning about shape, color and perspective.
After four weeks, 90 percent of the children who had received the music-based showed improvement in verbal intelligence, and actual changes in the brain were noted in an MRI. The children who had received visual arts training, by comparison, showed no verbal skill improvement or brain changes.
"The results of this study strongly affirm the resonance between music and child development, and encourage us to think of music not just as a medium or tool through which treatment might be delivered, but as the treatment itself," explained Dr. Tom Chau, one of the study’s authors.
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