Popular Science
June, 1997

Buying your kids a computer to open their minds to the wonders of science and logic? Maybe you had better buy a piano instead. A team of psychologists exploring the link between music and intelligence has found that piano instruction is far superior to computer instruction in enhancing the kind of abstract reasoning skills a child will need for excelling math and science later on.

In a two-year experiment, one group of preschoolers was given private piano and singing lessons and another got private computer lessons. The musically trained kids scored 34 percent higher than the other on tests measuring the higher brain functions critical in science, math and engineering.