Commentary on "Effects of Early Musical Experience on Auditory Sequence Memory" by Adam Tierney, Tonya Bergeson-Dana, and David Pisoni

Tierney, Bergeson-Dana, and Pisoni (2008) conclude that their results “provide additional converging evidence that early musical experience and activity-dependent learning may selectively affect verbal rehearsal processes and the allocation of attention in sequence memory tasks”. Closer inspection of their methods and results, the methods and results of previous studies that reported similar findings and the literature as a whole makes it clear that these conclusions are unfounded

Absolute Pitch: Effects of Timbre on Note-Naming Ability

Background: Absolute pitch (AP) is the ability to identify or produce isolated musical tones. It is evident primarily among individuals who started music lessons in early childhood. Because AP requires memory for specific pitches as well as learned associations with verbal labels (i.e., note names), it represents a unique opportunity to study interactions in memory between linguistic and nonlinguistic information. One untested hypothesis is that the pitch of voices may be difficult for AP possessors to identify. A musician’s first instrument may also affect performance and extend the sensitive period for acquiring accurate AP. Methods/Principal Findings: A large sample of AP possessors was recruited on-line. Participants were required to identity test tones presented in four different timbres: piano, pure tone, natural (sung) voice, and synthesized voice. Note-naming accuracy was better for non-vocal (piano and pure tones) than for vocal (natural and synthesized voices) test tones. This difference could not be attributed solely to vibrato (pitch variation), which was more pronounced in the natural voice than in the synthesized voice. Although starting music lessons by age 7 was associated with enhanced note-naming accuracy, equivalent abilities were evident among listeners who started music lessons on piano at a later age. Conclusions/Significance: Because the human voice is inextricably linked to language and meaning, it may be processed automatically by voice-specific mechanisms that interfere with note naming among AP possessors. Lessons on piano o

Cross-cultural perspectives on pitch memory.

Abstract We examined effects of age and culture on children's memory for the pitch level of familiar music. Canadian 9-and 10-year-olds distinguished the original pitch level of familiar television theme songs from foils that were pitch-shifted by one semitone, whereas 5-to 8-year-olds failed to do so (Experiment 1). In contrast, Japanese 5-and 6-year-olds distinguished the pitch-shifted foils from the originals, performing significantly better than same-age Canadian children (Experiment 2). Moreover, Japanese 6-year-olds were more accurate than their 5-year-old counterparts. These findings challenge the prevailing view of enhanced pitch memory during early life. We consider factors that may account for Japanese children's superior performance such as their use of a pitch accent language (Japanese) rather than a stress accent language (English) and their experience with musical pitch labels

Music lessons enhance IQ

ABSTRACT—The idea that music makes you smarter has received considerable attention from scholars and the media. The present report is the first to test this hypothesis directly with random assignment of a large sample of children (N 5 144) to two different types of music lessons (keyboard or voice) or to control groups that received drama lessons or no lessons. IQ was measured before and after the lessons. Compared with children in the control groups, children in the music groups exhibited greater increases in full-scale IQ. The effect was relatively small, but it generalized across IQ subtests, index scores, and a standardized measure of academic achievement. Unexpectedly, children in the drama group exhibited substantial pre- to posttest improvements in adaptive social behavior that were not evident in the music groups. Current interest in associations between music and intelligence stems from two independent areas of research (Schellenberg, 2003). One focuses on short-term effects of simple listening to music. The socalled Mozart effect refers to the finding that passive listening to music composed by Mozart produces temporary increases in spatial abilitie

Individuals with congenital amusia remember music they like

Music is better recognized when it is liked. Does this association remain evident when music perception and memory are severely impaired, as in congenital amusia? We tested 11 amusic and 11 matched control participants, asking whether liking of a musical excerpt influences subsequent recognition. In an initial exposure phase, participants-unaware that their recognition would be tested subsequently-listened to 24 musical excerpts and judged how much they liked each excerpt. In the test phase that followed, participants rated whether they recognized the previously heard excerpts, which were intermixed with an equal number of foils matched for mode, tempo, and musical genre. As expected, recognition was in general impaired for amusic participants compared with control participants. For both groups, however, recognition was better for excerpts that were liked, and the liking enhancement did not differ between groups. These results contribute to a growing body of research that examines the complex interplay between emotions and cognitive processes. More specifically, they extend previous findings related to amusics' impairments to a new memory paradigm and suggest that (1) amusic individuals are sensitive to an aesthetic and subjective dimension of the music-listening experience, and (2) emotions can support memory processes even in a population with impaired music perception and memory