By Bill Hendrick
Cox News Service

Los Angeles-

Giving your kids music lessons, encouraging them to enjoy music and perhaps playing Mozart concertos for them can significantly enhance their ability to learn, according to new research by a team of scientists.

Dr. Gordon Shaw of the University of California, Irvine, says his research seems to conclusively negate the notion-widespread in many education circles-that music education is irrelevant to intellectual development and therefore expendable.

“Indeed, the opposite is true, and many schools have erred by cutting music programs to save money,” Shaw said.

“By having children take music lessons as early as possible, parents may be able to improve reasoning abilities crucial for such higher brain
functions as music, complex mathematics and chess,” he said.

The performance of the children who got music lessons “far exceeded the spatial reasoning” of the preschoolers who did not.

“Moreover, scores on a puzzle task, designed to measure spatial reasoning ability, increased significantly during the course of the period they received music lessons,” Shaw said.

“The impact of the music seems to last longer, the younger the subjects.”

The studies have “serious educational and scientific implications” Shaw told his colleagues, 10,000 of whom are attending the American Psychological Association’s annual convention in Los Angeles.

“Even having your kids listen to music apparently will improve their intellectual capabilities”, he said, “but actually learning how to read and play music seems to have a much more dramatic effect.”