Stephen Black wrote:
From the _New Scientist_ e-mail newsletter: ----------------------------------------- Glenn Schellenberg, a psychologist from the University of Toronto at Mississauga, randomly assigned 144 6-year-olds to four groups. Over nine months the groups took either keyboard, voice or drama lessons at the prestigious Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto. The control group had no extra-curricular training. IQ was measured with standard tests before and after training. The effect was small, with a rise of just 7 IQ points for the keyboard and voice groups, compared with 4 in the drama and control groups.
Ken Steele of Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina says the effect is likely to be transient. "Targeted experiences may initially move you slightly ahead of peers," he says, "but your peers will eventually have similar experiences and catch up." --------------------------------------------------------
I think this guy, Ken Steele, whoever he is, is too pessimistic.
But the question of placebo effects always rears its cynical head. In this study, it was dealt with by including a group given drama lessons, presumed not to work if music alone was magic.
At this point, I have to say, "uh-oh." Because they did a seriously suspicious thing. THEY COMBINED THE NO LESSONS CONTROL WITH THE DRAMA CONTROL [Please excuse my capitals]. This negates the special value of using the drama group as a full-featured placebo condition.
It looks to me as though this may another example of data-torturing. Shame on them if that's the case.
Schellenberg had pretreatment and posttreatment scores for 4 treatment conditions (keyboard, voice, drama, and no-lessons). One wonders why an ANCOVA was not done or at least a 1-way ANOVA on the post-treatment scores--followed by contrasts.
Guess what? The posttreatment ANOVA is F(3, 128) = 2.49, p > .05.
Shame on the PS reviewers who permitted public data-torturing. I tried to explain this data-analysis issue to the reporter.
BTW, the pre-print of their work is available at http://www.erin.utoronto.ca/~w3psygs/MusicLessons.pdf
Oh, and one more thing. Six kids dropped out of the keyboard group, four dropped out of voice, but only two out of drama, and none out of no lessons. If it was the dummies who couldn't hack it (plausible), the fact that more dropped out of music could be the source of any small improvement in that group (but it would be artifactual).
Stephen ___________________________________________________ Stephen L. Black, Ph.D. tel: (819) 822-9600 ext 2470 Department of Psychology fax: (819) 822-9661 Bishop's University e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Lennoxville, QC J1M 1Z7 Canada
Dept web page at http://www.ubishops.ca/ccc/div/soc/psy
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--------------------------------------------------------------- Kenneth M. Steele, Ph.D. [EMAIL PROTECTED] Department of Psychology http://www.psych.appstate.edu Appalachian State University Boone, NC 28608 USA ---------------------------------------------------------------
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