cored significantly better on reading tests than those who were not exposed to music. At the University of California-Irvine, brain researcher Gordon Shaw showed that preschoolers who were given piano and singing lessons for 8 months performed much better at completing mazes and piecing together puzzles than the other children. In a separate study, preschoolers who listened to classical music tended to score higher on IQ tests. The list goes on and on, and everyday new evidence arises that reinforces this belief.What causes this dramatic improvement in reading, reasoning, and spatial skills? Experts in cognitive development, commonly referred to as "brain scientists", believe that when children listen to music, they must order the notes in their brain to forming melodies. They think that tests in spatial reasoning, such as putting together a puzzle, require the same reasoning skills. And since music is so mathematically oriented (8 notes in an octave, 2 beats in a half-note, etc.), experts speculate that by listening to music, children are exercising the same part of the brain that handles mathematics, logic, and higher level reasoning. Dr. Frances H. Rauscher, PhD, a research psychologist at the Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory at UC Irvine, agrees. "By exercising these brain patterns through music early in life," she says, "[I] think it's going to have an effect on your abstract reasoning throughout life." (Learning 24) Thus, by exposing your child to classical music as early as the age of 1, you may be helping his future logic, mathematical, and reasoning skills.However, researchers warn that listening to music won't make your child a genius. "Just listening to music presumably isn't going to make you smarter in the long run," cautions Dr. Shaw (Learning 24) Most experts also agree that children raised in a loving environment will get all the stimuli they need for healthy development. While this means th...
