There is a growing interest in potential transfer of learning from music training to non-musical cognitive domains. Because most studies on this topic have focussed on transfer from music to language and domain-general abilities (e.g., IQ), whether music training affects socio-emotional abilities remains poorly explored. Moreover, recent studies suggest that, while transfer across closely related domains (near transfer) might exist, transfer between substantially different domains (far transfer) is rare or non-existent. We conducted a longitudinal training study with 7-year-old second graders (N = 110; 54 girls, M age = 7.01 years, SD = 0.46), and examined near and far transfer effects of music training. The study was implemented in a regular school environment, and included pre-test, training and post-test phases, in three conditions: music (experimental condition), sports (active control condition), and no training (passive control condition). The training programs were conducted over two school years and lasted for approximately 13 months (ca. 111 hours). The measures of near transfer included auditory skills, fine-motor skills, and gross-motor skills, and the measures of far transfer included emotion recognition and voices and faces, and higher-order socio-emotional skills. We examined longitudinal effects of training by using mixed-effects modelling. Compared to the control groups, musically trained children improved significantly more on auditory and motor skills (near-transfer), but not on emotion recognition or higher-order socio- emotional skills (far-transfer). These findings inform debates on the use of music as an intervention tool in educational and clinical settings and have implications for models on music-related behavioral plasticity.

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