Is participation in the arts from an early age beneficial to the development of a child?

Of course it is. I mean its a creative outlet. One that unfortunately not enough children get to exposure to. I understand that sometimes its hard to believe everything that one reads about, studies done on this or that, since it always seems that for every study on one that proves it to be useful there is another study done somewhere else that proves otherwise. However, there are countless studies done on children who have early exposure to art and they always seem to have a positive outcome. The are correlations between critical thinking and art. Its been shown that children who pick up instruments at an early age tend to do better in subjects like math, or do well in school generally. Art helps children look a things from a different perspective than they get from other subjects. In truth art is found in so many of they're subjects at an early age not only to keep them entertain and thus interested but also to stimulate various parts of they're brain. Walk into any kindergarten class room and notice that some of the books they read and beautifully illustrated, in order for there to be connection made between language and the visual.
Pregnant women get told to play classical music to their children in womb, so its starts from the earliest of development stages. Like I stated previously its trusting various studies is always difficult (especially since I am not single out any in particular, but rather speaking more generally) but it seems that most studies do point to there being a reason for books or shows like "Little Einsteins" to use art works and classical music in their production.

What do adults gain from art? (I'll leave it general)