A Perspective on How Music Performance Training in Childhood and Adolescence Transfers Across Creative Domains Through Self-Regulation and Parental Support

Previous research on the far transfer effects of music performance training has primarily focused on its impact on general cognitive ability. However, it remains unclear whether such training could enable children and adolescents to be creative in other domains through the acquisition of self-regulation skills, which are essential for long-term creative achievement. To start addressing this gap, we develop a new perspective on how self-regulation skills acquired during music performance training, supported by parental psychological support, could transfer to other creative domains. This new perspective also highlights the relevant role of the parental psychological support in early childhood and adolescence, which is often understudied in research on transfer of music performance training. We build our new perspective on previous studies on the connection between music and far transfer, and self-regulation and creative achievement as well as studies on the link between social/parental support and self-regulation (in the music context). This paper constructs a new theoretical framework that could explain how different styles of parental psychological support (instructive, guiding, emotional, motivational, autonomous) are involved in the possible transferability of self-regulation skills from music performance training (e.g., self-setting goals, self-reinforcement, self-support) to other creative domains.