Excerpts from "Wired for Sound:
The Essential Connection Between Music and Development"
By Cynthia Ensign Baney.
(For full text click here.)

The results of incorporating music into the curriculum were very positive. After eight months, every child who participated in a music-training program increased in his or her spatial intelligence by an average of 46 percent over the control group's six percent increase.

Research confirms that the highest level of music aptitude occurs immediately after birth. Infants possess an abundance of genes and synapses that immediately make them ready for learning music. Environment must make use of this specific neural wiring, or it will be lost. Thus, the earlier music is introduced, the more potential the child has for learning.

Music aptitude flourishes in a musically enriched environment. In his research, Gordon defines the "window of opportunity" for developmental music aptitude as occurring between birth and age nine.

Dr. Dee Joy Coulter (1995), a nationally recognised neuroscience educator, classifies the songs, movement, and musical games of childhood as "brilliant neurological exercises" that introduce children to speech patterns, sensory motor skills, and vital movement strategies.

Just as a child learning to talk must first hear a human voice speaking, his or her language acquisition would be incomplete without the opportunity to interact with other people. A child explores his or her potential to communicate through sound and speech patterns. Children must have the opportunity to participate in active music making. To listen to music without the opportunity to engage actively in music production is like hearing the language without the opportunity to communicate with anyone else.

Conclusion: A child's initial musical experience is so vital to development that it could be viewed as a "...pre-clinical dose of treatment utilising speech, motor development and sensory integration," says Dr. Lorna Heyge. Although scientists, therapists, parents, teachers, and music experts may have different motivations for opening the world of music experience for each child, the benefits of music development, within the "window of opportunity" are overwhelmingly positive for the child.