Massimo Grassi, Francesca Talamini, Gianmarco Altoè, Elvira Brattico, Anne Caclin, Barbara Carretti, Véronique Drai-Zerbib, Laura Ferreri, Filippo Gambarota, Jessica A. Grahn, Lucrezia Guiotto Nai Fovino, Marco Roccato, Antoni Rodríguez‐Fornells, Swathi Swaminathan, Barbara Tillmann, Peter Vuust, Jonathan M. P. Wilbiks, Marcel Zentner, Karla Aguilar, Christ Billy Aryanto, Francisca Leite, Aíssa M. Baldé, Deniz Başkent, Laura Bishop, Graziela Bortz, Fleur L. Bouwer, Axelle Calcus, Giulio Carraturo, Victor Cepero-Escribano, Antonia Čerič, Antonio Criscuolo, Léo Dairain, Simone Dalla Bella, Óscar Daniel, Anne Danielsen, Anne-Isabelle de Parcevaux, Delphine Dellacherie, Tor Endestad, Juliana L. d. B. Fialho, Caitlin Fitzpatrick, Anna Fiveash, Juliette Fortier, Noah R. Fram, Eleonora Fullone, Stefanie Gloggengießer, Lucia Gonzalez Sanchez, Reyna L. Gordon, Mathilde Groussard, Assal Habibi, Heidi Marie Umbach Hansen, Eleanor Harding, Kirsty Hawkins, Steffen A. Herff, Veikka P. Holma, Kelly Jakubowski, Maria G. Jol, Aarushi Kalsi, Veronica Kandro, Rosaliina Kelo, Sonja A. Kotz, Gangothri S. Ladegam, Bruno Laeng, André Lee, Miriam Lense, César F. Lima, Simon P. Limmer, Changlin Liu, Paulina d. C. Martín Sánchez, Langley McEntyre, Jessica P. Michael, Daniel Mirman, Daniel Müllensiefen, Niloufar Najafi, Jaakko Nokkala, Ndassi Nzonlang, Maria Gabriela Menezes Oliveira, Katie Overy, Andrew J. Oxenham, Edoardo Passarotto, Marie-Elisabeth Plasse, Hervé Platel, Alice Poissonnier, Neha Rajappa, Michaela Ritchie, Italo Ramon Rodrigues Menezes, Rafael Román-Caballero, Paula Roncaglia, Farrah Y. Sa’adullah, Suvi Saarikallio, Daniela Sammler, Séverine Samson, E. Glenn Schellenberg, Nora R. Serres, L. Robert Slevc, Ragnya-Norasoa Souffiane, Florian J. Strauch, Hannah Strauß, Nicholas Tantengco, Mari Tervaniemi, Rachel Thompson
Musicians are often regarded as a positive example of brain plasticity and associated cognitive benefits. This emerges when experienced musicians (e.g., musicians with more than 10 years of music training and practice) are compared with nonmusicians. A frequently observed behavioral finding is a short-term memory advantage of the former over the latter. Although available meta-analysis reported that the effect size of this advantage is medium (Hedges’s g = 0.5), no literature study was adequately powered to estimate reliably an effect of such size. This multilab study has been ideated, realized, and conducted in lab by several groups that have been working on this topic. Our ultimate goal was to provide a community-driven shared and reliable estimate of the musicians’ short-term memory advantage (if any) and set a method and a standard for future studies in neuroscience and psychology comparing musicians and nonmusicians. Thirty-three research units recruited a total of 600 experienced musicians and 600 nonmusicians, a number that is sufficiently large to estimate a small effect size (Hedges’s g = 0.3) with a high statistical power (i.e., 95%). Subsequently, we measured the difference in short-term memory for musical, verbal, and visuospatial stimuli. We also looked at cognitive, personality, and socioeconomic factors that might mediate the difference. Musicians had better short-term memory than nonmusicians for musical, verbal, and visuospatial stimuli with an effect size of, respectively, Hedges’s g s = 1.08 (95% confidence interval [CI] = [0.94, 1.22]; large), 0.16 (95% CI = [0.02 0.30]; very small), and 0.28 (95% CI = [0.15, 0.41]; small). This work sets the basis for sound research practices in studies comparing musicians and nonmusicians and contributes to the ongoing debate on the possible cognitive benefits of musical training.