Abstract
Previous researchers have found that students partaking in a music curriculum experienced a plethora of cognitive benefits such as an increase in their mathematic, literacy, and visuo-spatial skills. The aim of this study was to examine cognitive outcomes of the Thinking in Music curriculum on preschool students ages 3 to 5 years. The hypothesis was that students experiencing the Thinking in Music curriculum would produce greater improvements over pre-curriculum to post-curriculum time points on tasks assessing working memory, categorization, and executive functioning relative to their age-matched peers not receiving the curriculum. For the memory assessment, all participants decreased their attempted trials needed to reach a final score but did not improve on their total memory set score. Relative to participants in the control group, curriculum participants showed an increased ability to learn a new rule in the categorization task. Relative to participants in the control group, more curriculum participants completed the computerized attention task at both time points, both groups significantly improved on their hit reaction time, however neither group significantly improved on their percent omission errors or percent commission errors. Future researchers should continue to study the curriculum as well as increase the sample size and duration of the curriculum. \r \r Keywords: Music curriculum, preschool, cognitive effects, Working Memory Capacity, attention, impulsivity, sort, sequence.