Focus On: Research

Researchers at the University of California at Irvine suggest that music training may enhance the development of spatial-reasoning skills in very young children.

A team led by Frances H. Rauscher and Gordon L. Shaw of the university's Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory studied a total of 10 3-year-old girls in an inner-city day-care school and a school for the arts. The children were administered the performance subtest of the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence-Revised.

The children in the day-care center then received 30 minutes of group singing each day, while the children in the arts school received weekly 15-minute private keyboard lessons. Both groups were then retested after three months and...