The Structure and Mechanism of the Relation between Music Making, Executive Functions, and Sensory Discrimination

Music making, people’s lifetime engagement with actively making music, has been hypothesised to be associated with better executive functions, which are higher-order cognitive skills underpinning goal-directed behaviour. There were many empirical studies have shown a relationship between music making and executive functions, but no clear explanation of why there was a relationship between them. This thesis aims to investigate why and how are music making and executive functions related. For this purpose, Study 1 (Chapter 2) assessed the strength of the relationship between music making and three factors of executive functions (inhibition, shifting, and updating) through a systematic review and meta-analysis and found the largest average association with updating. Next, Study 2 (Chapter 3) investigated the relationship between music making and executive functions by assessing the relationship between frequency of music making in everyday life and executive functions across the adult lifespan. The results showed no significant relationship between frequency of music making and executive functions after accounting for age. Finally, Study 3 (Chapter 4) tested the hypothesis that music making and working memory are related through better sensory discrimination in people with stronger music skills. The results showed that sensory discrimination mediated the relationship between music skill and auditory working memory, but not visual working memory, suggesting that the relationship is specific to the auditory modality. Taken together, the findings of this thesis give a new insight on the underlying mechanism between music making and executive functions and for future longitudinal studies to investigate the causal relationship, especially in different modalities.