It is correlated in DD's case. They wanted her to take piano before she was 3.5, when we were just trying to get into a music and me kind of class. We finally agreed on her 4th birthday. She was already showing signs of being highly gifted in math at 3, when her Montessori teacher told us how far she was working their math area in just 2 months.
The Special Music School, that is selective on assumed musical ability, doesn't do any homework in K what I saw in grade 1 looked like K math to me. Yet, by 8th grade, the kids there do so well that most of them get into Styvescant. The entrance exam requires well above average math scores.
Is it giftedness in math or does music create the right synapse construction. When you think of how much brain development there is, especially reasoning, right through to our mid 20s, maybe there is a big nurture factor here.
Though why is it, that so many of these super genius' like Kit Armstrong are so good at piano?
There is a professor at NYU who has done research that shows string or piano lessons increase IQ, 6-7 points per year in the first couple of years. Yes, 6-7 points though this was done with a group from inner city, so you could have mean level IQs around 100.
Ren
