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© 2018 IJRAR December 2018, Volume 5, Issue 4 www.ijrar.org (E-ISSN 2348-1269, P- ISSN 2349-5138)

IJRAR1BIP083 International Journal of Research and Analytical Reviews (IJRAR) www.ijrar.org 476

Effect of Music on Cognitive Processes – A Theoretical

Review

Shruti Sharma

MA Psychology Student,

School of Humanities,

Lovely Professional University, Phagwara, Punjab, India.

Angel Anu John

Assistant Professor, Psychology,

School of Humanities,

Lovely Professional University, Phagwara, Punjab, India.

Abstract: Music has always been an essential part of our world. No one can deny the importance of music in

improving mood and providing comfort. But there is more to music than just a pleasurable stimulus. Music has

played a significant role in improvement of cognitive abilities in both children and adults. The aim of this

theoretical review was to see how music affects different cognitive processes individually, such as, intelligence,

learning, memory, language skills, sensation, perception, reasoning and decision making. Although this review was

successful in proving the positive effect that music has on cognitive functions and also the benefits of music

interventions. Further research is needed to find out the limitations of using music as an effective method for

improving cognitive processes.

Keywords: Cognitive Processes, Music, Therapy, Improvement

Introduction:

Music has been part of every culture since the beginning of the world. Preferences for different music forms have

changed over and over again with time. But the existence of music is consistent. It is now a well-known fact that

music is very beneficial for everyone who listens or practices it on regular basis. Music has been known for its

effectiveness in improving mood, reducing stress, lessening anxiety, providing comfort, etc. Research has always

indicated that music has positive effect on cognitive abilities. The purpose of this theoretical review is to find if the

notion is true. And if yes, then what are the effects of music on different cognitive abilities.

Cognitive Processes: By Cognitive Processes we simply mean all the mental functions. Cognition means the act of

knowing. It can be referred as mental processes through which both internal and external output is transformed,

reduced, elaborated, stored, recovered and used. These processes mostly work independently at different stages of

processing and can be empirically investigated (Ulrich Neisser, 1967). There are some basic mental processes, such

as, sensation, attention and perception. Then there are also complex mental processes, such as, intelligence,

memory, learning, language skills, problem solving, decision making and reasoning. In last decade many

researchers linked music training with improved cognitive abilities and there has been an indication that musicians

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Intelligence: There has been significant evidence that training in music has positive effect on intelligence of people.

This effect is easier to notice in children than adults. In a study it was noted that musicians had exhibited higher

cognitive performance than non-musicians. Musicians had higher general intelligence and verbal intelligence than

non-musicians. Training in music for many years is positively correlated to intelligence. The results are also

supported by previous research which shows the same conclusion (Chan et al., 1998; Gromko and Poorman, 1998;

Cheek and Smith, 1999; Hetland, 2000; Brandler and Rammsayer, 2003; Brochard et al., 2004; Schellenberg, 2004,

2006; Swaminathan et al., 2017, 2018). Another study was also able to report an increase in fluid and general

intelligence because of music (Talamini, Altoè, Carretti, & Grassi, 2017). Also, children who take music lessons

have higher IQ’s than other children without music lessons (Gibson, Folley and Park, 2009; Hille et al., 2011;

Schellenberg, 2011; Schellenberg and Mankarious, 2012).

Memory: Training in music in childhood or adulthood is positively correlated to working memory (Hansen,

Wallentin and Vuust, 2013; Roden, Grube, Bongard and Kreutz, 2014). Music training was a predictor of enhanced

auditory and visual memory (Hanna-Pladdy and Gajewski, 2012; George and Coch, 2011; Lee, Lu and Ko, 2007).

In some instances, auditory memory was found to be more benefited through music, whereas in others visual

memory was enhanced. Background music seems to work as modulator for mood and arousal which in turn

enhances memory performance. (Greene, Bahri, & Soto, 2010; Husain, Thompson, & Schellenberg, 2002;

Thompson, Schellenberg, & Husain, 2001). Research literature of alzheimer’s disease and music mnemonics shows

that encoding verbal information in a singing mode leads to better subsequent recall and recognition in comparison

to speech mode (Moussard et al., 2014; Palisson et al., 2015; Prickett & Moore, 1991; Simmons-Stern et al., 2012).

Thus, music seems to enhance memory for verbal material. Musical encoding of verbal information also seems

beneficial for older adults for normal aging (Ratovohery, Baudouin, Gachet, Palisson & Narme, 2018).

Language: Music training has been positively associated with improvements in verbal abilities, such as reading and

phonology (Anvari et al., 2002; Moreno et al., 2009; Kraus et al., 2014; Francois et al., 2015). In a study it was

found out that kids trained in music had better phonological awareness in comparison to other kids who got trained

in swimming or not trained at all (Rauscher and Hinton, 2011). Individuals trained in music showed better speech

perception and other language abilities in both reading and spelling (Schellenberg, 2016). Music is known to have

positive effect on speech processing, better perception of prosody, speech segmentation, synaptic processing and

production of sounds in foreign languages (Intartaglia, White-Schwoch, Kraus & Schön, 2017).

Learning: Background music has a positive and stimulating effect on learning. This result was supported by both

Mozart effect and arousal-mood hypothesis (Rauscher et al., 1993 & Husain et al., 2002). Characteristics of music

(like- tempo and intensity) are important aspect to keep in mind when learning as certain music has positive

influence on learning and other type of music hindered learning. It was found out that only soft fast music is good

for learning outcomes and soft slow or loud slow had a negative impact on learning. Also, instrumental music is

good for concentration of learners as it does not disturb them as much as music with lyrics (Thompson et al., 2011

& Perham and Currie, 2014).

tend to perform better than non-musicians on several cognitive abilities. To justify this statement, we will have

to analyze the effects of music on different cognitive processes individually.

Sensation: Music is not a mere source of pleasurable stimulus. It has much extra-ordinary effect on both brain and

body that we are yet unaware of. Engaging in music from an early stage of life may have a compensatory effect

which adds to healthy aging and is also known to slow down symptoms of dementia, although it cannot prevent

dementia fully. It may be helpful in reduction of behavioral and psychological symptoms in people living

with dementia (Ridder, 2018). Music therapy is known to be beneficial for children with sensory processing

disorder because both music and sensory system are connected to nervous system. In regards to sensory processing

disorder, music helps in improvement of sensory profiles of children and in particular plasticity of sensory system.




Perception: Music has been known to reduce pain perception and helps in pain management. (Bradt, 2010;Nilsson,

Rawal & Unosson, 2003;Wang et al.,2002). Music is able to distract and change mood and gives patients feelings of

relaxation. It gives people a sense of control over pain and helps in reducing stress ((Linnemann et al., 2015; Clark

and Tamplin, 2016).

Decision Making: Music has a surprising and non-trivial effect on people. It alters their choices by changing their

moods. Research says that mood affects how people process information. Music can enable people to accept good

bets and reject bad bets. When people listen to a particular kind of music that induces happy mood, people tend to

make better and faster choices consistently in comparison to when their mood is bad as induced by music, their

choices are poor and imply increased discriminability. Certain kind of music leads people to make better decision

than others (Liebman, Stone & White, 2016)

Reasoning: Music is known to improve both verbal and non-vernal reasoning ability (Forgeard, Winner, Norton, &

Schlaug, 2008). A study found that figurative lyric music helps in increasing analogical reasoning skills in

comparison to literal lyric music (Clark, 2018). Musicians are identified to have better spatial reasoning abilities

than untrained individuals (Sluming,Brooks, Howard, Downes and Roberts, 2007). Through music especially piano

training children learn convergent and divergent ways of thinking (Sousa, 2009).

Conclusion:

It is clear that music does have a positive effect on all cognitive abilities and also, training in music leads to better

performance in cognitive activities than untrained individuals. It is seen that music based interventions help in

reaching higher cognition which facilitates in maintenance, enhancement and there is also chance of recovery of

impaired cognitive functions. Still, we cannot ignore the limitations present in using music based techniques.

Further research is needed to throw some more light on the aspect of music and its effective use in cognitive

processes.

Attention: Music has profound effect on attention. The longer a person practices music with least interferences, the

better his/her attentive abilities get. It is also thought that music has such a strong impact on our cognitive

processing because music lessons train individuals in attentional and executive functioning which is beneficial for all

kinds of cognitive activities (Hannon and Trainor, 2007). A study indicates that positive mood induced by

unfamiliar instrumental music is good for the scope of auditory selective attention (Rowe et al., 2007 & Putkinen,

Makkonen & Eerola, 2017). In some clinical studies, it was seen that active musical interventions can lead to

enhancement in attentional processes.




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Intartaglia, B., White-Schwoch, T., Kraus, N., & Schön, D. (2017). Music training enhances the automatic neural

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