"Musicians have a bigger IQ than
other people."
Hmm...not the musicians *I* used
to play with. Certainly not the drummers.
Seriously, I don't see any reason
to think that musicians would have *higher* IQs than "other people."
The mental abilities measured by the IQ - analytical thinking, memory
capacity - are not unique to musicians. One might argue that you cannot
be a good musician without them, but then you get into the slippery
definition of what is a "good" musician, e.g., what are "right notes"
(how about Charlie Parker when he was skroning)? What is musicianship?
Of course classically trained
musicians who have had hours of ear training, sight reading and been
forced to memorize long pieces will likely score better on the IQ test
than normal controls, but is that an ability related to being a
musician or just a result of being forced to do mentally challenging
tasks? Are these people any more musicians than a naturally gifted
musician who cannot sight read and is by most measures dumb as a post?
If you operationalize the
definitions quite a bit you might get a testable hypothesis. But my
advice - don't test drummers.
Brian Gygi
Veterans Affairs Northern
CAlifornia Health Care System
Martinez CA
-----Original Message-----
From: Daniel Ladwig [mailto:clarinetbuddy8@xxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Friday, August 8, 2008 01:10 PM
To: AUDITORY@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Rethinking my psychology seminar project
I originally planned to do my project on
intelligence differences between musicians and non-musicians..but I
thought that was too fague and we already know that musicians have a
bigger IQ then other people.
I decided to do my study on..well here is my hypothesis: More
persistent musicians have higher IQ's then less persistent musicians.
So instead of looking at people who do and don't play music..we can
look at people that both play but some musicians may be at reading,
making the right sounds and putting a lot of musicianship into the
music. Think of great musicians like Charlie Parker and Gene
Krupa..just by listening to how they play, you must believe that they
were geniuses.
I was think of taking 25 good musicians and 25 not so good musicians
and give them some kind of IQ test and playing ability test..not sure
what kind yet..got any tips on that? There are probably factors
involved? (maybe being lazy, not wanting to practice or wanting to be
the best...other than a not so good musician's IQ.) Maybe some
physiological and mentel aspects involved.
If not that idea, do you have any good
ideas around that kind of field??
If you have any tips or ideas and places where I can get some research
on these narrow topic PLEASE let me know! If you have any other good
idea also please let me know!
I'm a psychology major at CSU Chico
working on my BA right now. I plan to go to a grad school to get my
Ph.D in Cognitive Neuroscience.
Thank you!
~Dan T. Ladwig
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