Cognition and music: a developmental perspective

本研究的目的是探讨（1）音乐课程如何影响认知发展，以及（2）音乐认知如何随着发展而变化。第一系列研究将探讨音乐训练与认知发展的关系。我们知道，音乐课可以预测智力的微小但非常普遍的增长。这种关联似乎是因果关系，课程持续时间越长，预期收益越大。这种关联是显而易见的，无论结果措施涉及语言，数学，或空间能力。它们在构成标准化智商测试的各种子测试和指数中也很明显。然而，这些发现并不排除音乐课影响一些潜在的处理机制的可能性（例如，执行功能，工作记忆）比其他机制更多，这些机制对智力功能有广泛的影响。为了检验这一假设，儿童和成人将用相关方法进行测试，以记录预先存在的关联。一个单独的纵向实验与儿童将允许因果关系的推论。测试将涉及一系列认知和感知测试，以确定一个或多个测试的表现是否会因音乐训练而变化。音乐是认知科学家特别感兴趣的研究领域，因为音乐曲调是由关系信息定义的。因此，听众可以识别熟悉的曲调，无论它是以高音快速播放还是以低音缓慢播放。但是听众也会记住关于音乐音色（音质）、音高和克里思的细粒度绝对信息。另一系列实验将检验儿童和成人对旋律和短音序列的心理表征。总体目标是研究如何敏感性的绝对和相对的音乐特征的变化，随着发展。其他目标是确定不同的绝对特征如何相互作用，不同的相对特征如何相互作用，以及绝对特征如何与相对特征相互作用。

The goals of the proposed research are to examine (1) how music lessons affect cognitive development, and (2) how music cognition changes over development. The first series of studies will examine how training in music is associated with cognitive development. We know that music lessons are predictive of small but very general increases in intellectual ability. The association appears to be causal, with longer duration of lessons predicting larger benefits. Such associations are evident whether the outcome measures involve verbal, mathematical, or spatial abilities. They are also evident across the various subtests and indexes that comprise standardized IQ tests. These findings do not exclude the possibility, however, that music lessons affect some underlying processing mechanisms (e.g., executive functioning, working memory) more than others, and that these mechanisms have broad effects on intellectual functioning. To examine this hypothesis, children and adults will be tested with correlational methods to document pre-existing associations. A separate longitudinal experiment with children will allow for inferences of causation. Testing will involve a battery of cognitive and perceptual tests to determine whether performance on one or more tests varies as a function of musical training.Music is a particularly interesting domain of study for cognitive scientists because a musical tune is defined by relational information. As such, listeners can recognize a familiar tune whether it is played quickly at a high pitch, or slowly at a low pitch. But listeners also remember fine-grained absolute information about musical timbre (sound quality), pitch, and tempo. Another series of experiments will examine children's and adults' mental representations of melodies and short tone sequences. The overarching goal is to examine how sensitivity to absolute and relative features of music changes over development. Other goals are to determine how different absolute features interact, how different relative features interact, and how absolute features interact with relative features.