Common evidence, multiple interpretations: commentaries on a multilab study on musicians’ short-term memory

The multilab registered report by Grassi et al. represents the largest collaborative effort to date to estimate differences in short-term memory between musicians and nonmusicians, testing 1,200 participants across 33 units in 15 countries in an a priori registered design that adhered to open-science practices. Beyond providing precise effect-size estimates, the project exposed substantial diversity in how experts interpret the same data set, particularly regarding the causal status and practical significance of musicians’ cognitive advantages. Here, we present six independent commentaries, each authored by a subset of researchers of the original team, that articulate these contrasting perspectives. Lima and Schellenberg argue that cross-sectional advantages are best explained by preexisting differences rather than training. Román-Caballero et al. emphasize small but reliable far-transfer effects of musical training on domain-general cognition. Zappa et al. call for greater caution in policy claims about music as a cognitive intervention, and Roncaglia et al. situate musical training alongside other forms of expertise (e.g., chess, physical exercise, bilingualism) as one of several routes to cognitive enhancement. Slevc highlights how coordinated multilab projects can help generate specific and testable predictions in a field that often lacks them, and Grassi and Talamini reflect on the broader methodological value of multilab initiatives for building a more accountable and replicable cognitive science. Together, these commentaries showcase productive theoretical pluralism and outline key directions for future research on musical training, cognition, and large-scale collaborative methods.