So many very talented musicians are known to first start learning their instrument at a very young age. Is it just a coincidence that they were naturally drawn to the instrument that they were destined to play? Well perhaps, but a new study also reveals that making a connection with an instrument very early in a child’s life will help them to foster a better natural understanding of it.
Getting your child to start an instrument early on could absolutely be the key for them to get the most out of their music lessons. A new study has shown that children who started learning to play their musical instruments before the age of seven developed stronger connections in certain parts of the brain. Interestingly this suggests that there may be an ideal ‘developmental window’ for children to pick up specific skills.
It was revealed that children who had started their music lessons earlier in life had a better performance on certain kinds of tasks and also had differences in the connections between the motor regions of their brain.
The study looked at 36 trained musicians. Half of them had begun studying music before age seven and the other half after seven. The participants were then asked to perform a simple task that required tapping out a rhythm to assess their motor timing and synchronisation. The researchers found that those musicians who had started learning before the age of seven had better timing and better synchronisation than the other musicians.
It certainly seems that when it comes to musical instruments at least, the earlier you start your child off, the more likely they are to develop natural skills that can be the basis of real talent.
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