Musical Expertise and Cognitive Abilities: No Advantage for Professionals over Amateurs

It is commonly assumed that music training enhances general cognitive abilities, implying a positive, experience-dependent link between musical expertise and cognitive performance. To test this assumption, we reanalyzed data from the Music Ensemble project—a large-scale, multi-laboratory initiative spanning over 30 laboratories from 15 countries. We compared nonmusicians (n = 608), amateur musicians (n = 289), and professional musicians (n = 352) on measures of musical ability, general cognition, and personality, while controlling for demographic differences. As expected, musical abilities increased with expertise: professionals outperformed amateurs, who outperformed nonmusicians. For cognitive performance, however, the pattern was more complex. Only short-term memory (STM) for melodies increased monotonically with expertise. Verbal STM was similar across groups, and other cognitive domains revealed nonlinear associations. Both musician groups outperformed nonmusicians in visuospatial STM, vocabulary, and executive functioning (updating), but professionals did not exceed amateurs in any of these domains, and they even performed worse in nonverbal reasoning. Personality traits also differed across groups. Professionals scored higher on open-mindedness than both other groups, but lower on agreeableness than amateurs. Thus, despite superior musical abilities and distinctive personalities, professional musicians showed no cognitive advantage over amateurs. These findings challenge claims about the cognitive benefits of musical expertise and call for more nuanced models of how music training relates to general cognition.