Start Small, Dream Big: Stretching the Brain - Do Music Lessons as a Child Help to Develop Diversity Adaptability?

Do you want your child to be more creative, altruistic, ambitious, and develop a more complete perspective? Is there a way to teach them all these things and more at the same time?

Quite possibly.

Researchers from Keio University in conjunction with the Yamaha Music Foundation have looked into a factor that may contribute to all this development in a child.

Music lessons — or any kind of music-related learning experiences — may help stretch and exercise the brain to develop great diversity adaptability.

Let’s see what they found out!

First, let’s explain diversity adaptability. Here’s the technical definition from the study “the ability to exercise individuality and accomplish things in the presence of culturally diverse human resources.”

What?

Basically, this term refers to your ability to stay true to yourself and accomplish goals even in situations where the resources at your disposal are unfamiliar or varied.

To study this, researchers broke out diversity adaptability into 8 sections:

To measure these 8 categories, researchers used various statements such as “I know the importance of looking at things from an overall perspective” or “I energetically take up things I’ve never done before.” Participants could then rate whether they agreed or disagreed and to what degree.

To find out if musical activities as a child is a factor, the study participants were divided into two groups — those who had engaged in music-related learning activities as a child and those who didn’t.

People with a musical background got higher marks in 7 of the 8 categories than those who didn’t study music. This indicates that those who have music-related learning experiences as a child grow up as more well-rounded adults who are better able to work with others and well as think creatively.

There are a couple of important caveats to note. First, this survey is subjective. Each participant is answering based upon their opinion of themselves — which as we know can be very subjective.

Second, there may be other unseen factors at work. Parents who choose music lessons for their kids may have other factors in common such as affluence, playing a musical instrument themselves, or placing a higher emphasis on learning in general.

However, researchers did their best to control for these factors. So that brings us back to the very real possibility that music-related learning can have a significantly positive effect on a person’s diversity adaptability.

Everyone wants their child to grow up and become the best version of themselves. According to this research, music-related learning proves to be an excellent method of bringing these positive qualities out in your child.

Interested in signing your child up for music lessons? Contact us today to get started!