Music, cognition, and cognitive development

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The proposed studies extend two separate streams of NSERC-funded research that have been conducted in my lab for several years. Both streams aim to improve our understanding of music and cognition. One examines memory for music: what details listeners remember, what factors make music more memorable, and how the process of perceiving and remembering music changes as a function of enculturation (increasing age and informal exposure) and formal exposure to music (music lessons). The other stream examines how musical abilities are associated with nonmusical cognitive abilities, including language abilities and general cognitive functioning (IQ). Music cognition is an especially interesting area of study for cognitive scientists because music, like language, has surface and abstract features that can vary independently. The abstract level of music is the tune, defined by relations among its component pitches and tone durations, whereas the surface level includes the key (pitch level), tempo (speed), and timbre (musical instrument). Changes in the surface level do not change the tune, and virtually everyone can recognize a familiar tune presented in a novel key, tempo, and/or timbre. Although mental representations of music were once thought to consist of information that is entirely relational, it has become clear that surface features are also remembered. The proposed experiments will examine memory for previously unfamiliar tunes (monophonic tone sequences). The basic method involves an exposure phase that includes a set of tunes, followed by a test phase that includes the same (old) tunes plus an equal number of new tunes. Participants rate how confident they are that they heard the tune in the exposure phase. Some of the old tunes are changed to varying degrees in pitch, tempo, and/or timbre, but participants are typically instructed to ignore such changes. The delay between exposure and test phases (10 min, 1 day, 1 week) is a between-subjects variable, as are age and music training. Comparisons of recognition ratings for old and new tunes assess listeners’ memory for relational information. Comparisons of old-same and old-different (e.g., sped up) tunes indicate whether changes in surface features reduce recognition accuracy, implying that such features are also stored in memory. Comparisons based on age and music training reveal changes in the weighting of surface and relational cues as a function of informal and formal exposure to music. Other interactions examine whether listeners represent surface features jointly or additively in memory, and whether these processes change as a function of exposure to music. The issue of associations between musical and nonmusical abilities is central to theories about the nature of intelligence (g, modularity, or multiple intelligences), and to hypotheses of special links between musical abilities and specific aspects of cognitive functioning, such as language skills. Musical abilities vary according to (1) expertise due to formal training, practice, and performing, and (2) aptitude, or individual differences among individuals with no formal training. The proposed studies will test whether both types of musical abilities are associated with general cognitive abilities (IQ), and whether there is a special association between musical and language abilities. Musical abilities are expected to be predictive of IQ. Partial associations between musical and language abilities (with IQ held constant) are also expected, highlighting substantive relations between musical and language abilities. The research will enhance our understanding of the structure of mental abilities. It could also inform interventions designed to ameliorate problems among individuals with poor language abilities.