Abstract

Music is a basic form of human functioning (Welch & Adams, 2003): everyone listens to music in one form or another, many defining themselves in terms of it, and most significantly, viewing musical engagement and participation as crucial to their everyday life (North, Hargreaves, & Hargreaves, 2004). As one of the most demanding tasks for the human central nervous system (Altenmüller & McPherson, 2008), optimal engagement in formal learning opportunities in music offers young people numerous personal and social benefits, including more developed intellectual and cognitive-emotional awareness (Schellenberg, 2006), increased social responsibility (Schellenberg, 2006), and improvements in verbal and nonverbal reasoning ability (Forgeard, Winner, Norton, & Schlaug, 2008).