![]() The tests of Seashore and Gordon actually had six and seven subtests, respectively, which included measures of other musical dimensions such as the perception of loudness and meter. The various tests all had at least two subtests, one measuring pitch (melody) perception and another measuring temporal (rhythm) perception. Perhaps the most widely used test in North America was Gordon’s Musical Aptitude Profile (Gordon, 1965), although tests by Wing ( 1962) and Bentley ( 1966) were common in the UK. The goal of Seashore’s test and others that followed was to determine whether an individual-typically a child-was a suitable candidate for music training. One of the first tests of musical aptitude was created by Seashore ( 1919 Seashore, Saetveit, & Lewis 1960). In other words, the sine qua non of an environmental contribution to musical accomplishment is actually a gene–environment interaction (Hambrick & Tucker-Drob, 2015). Twin studies further document that genetic factors play a role in determining a musician’s choice of musical genre and instrument (Mosing & Ullén, 2018), and, most crucially, amount of practice (Butkovic, Ullén, & Mosing, 2015 Mosing, Madison, Pedersen, Kuja-Halkola, & Ullén, 2014). Rather, practice has a stronger effect for those born with the genetic propensities for musicianship (Hambrick & Tucker-Drob, 2015 Mosing, Madison, Pedersen, & Ullén, 2016). Moreover, in the case of musical achievement, twin studies demonstrate that practice does not influence everyone equally. By the early 21st century, however, results from studies of behavioral genetics implicated a role for genes in virtually every measurable human characteristic (DiLalla, 2017), such that there was a resurgence of interest in individual differences in musical aptitude, and in measuring these differences accurately.Īs it turns out, the association between practice and achievement remains valid, but the link is weaker than once thought, for music as well as for other domains such as sports, games, education, and professions (Macnamara, Hambrick, & Oswald, 2014 Macnamara, Moreau, & Hambrick, 2016 Meinz & Hambrick, 2010). Although this view was consistent with the dominance of behaviorism in experimental psychology in the early 20th century (Graham, 2019 Skinner, 1976), it lingered long after the birth of cognitive science and the so-called cognitive revolution (Thagard, 2019). Later in the 20th century, however, the notion of talent was questioned (Ericsson, Rampe, & Tesch-Römer, 1993 Howe, Davidson, & Sloboda, 1998), such that individual differences in musical achievement were considered to be the consequence of practice and other environmental factors such as parental support and encouragement. In the early 1900s, individual differences in aptitude were assumed to be real and the first modern tests of aptitude were developed. It is not surprising, then, that the history of musical-aptitude testing has been influenced by changes over time in scholars’ attitude toward the concepts of aptitude and talent, and toward nativism more generally. In principle, individual differences in musical ability among participants with no music training must stem from differences in predispositions for musical ability, or musical aptitude (natural musical ability), assuming that all other environmental factors are equal. The MET appears to have adequate psychometric characteristics that make it suitable for researchers who seek to measure musical abilities objectively. Listeners who spoke a tone language exhibited enhanced performance on the Melody subtest but not on the Rhythm subtest. Moreover, as duration of music training increased, so did performance on both subtests, but starting lessons at a younger age was not predictive of better musical abilities. As expected, scores on both subtests were correlated with performance on a test of immediate recall for nonmusical auditory stimuli (Digit Span Forward). There were no gender differences on either subtest or the total score. The distribution of scores was approximately normal without floor or ceiling effects. ![]() Norms were derived as percentiles, Z-scores, and T-scores. On each trial, listeners judged whether standard and comparison auditory sequences were the same or different. A large sample of undergraduates at a Canadian university ( N > 500) took the 20-min test, which provided a Total score as well as separate scores for its Melody and Rhythm subtests. We sought to establish norms and correlates for the Musical Ear Test (MET), an objective test of musical ability.
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