Re: [AUDITORY] Papers on lack of effect of musical training

The problem with squaring the circle of saying that music matters and yet rejecting the practice of working definitions and pragmatic assessments of causality is that all scientific disciplines have to contend with it. It ignores the larger social paradigm within which research and education must place itself. If the academic study of music is to have any relevance for broader society at all, it must find a way to stoop to the mundane from time to time.

The tendency for poor designs and unsubstantiated claims is a genuine concern, but it is certainly not one that is not restricted to musicology. Even more: Issues of causality and ground-truth definitions are universal, not even the study of logic can fully escape it.

The usual solution is just to stipulate terms, so that one is clear about whatever definition of music one is employing in a given study for the purposes of that study. Causality is usually dealt with in the same way: p-values and significance do not actually allow the logical inference of causality, they are just arbitrary thresholds that we establish as proxies precisely but it allows us to escape this very problem. There is no amount of study design that will ever truly justify any causal claim, and no amount of reasoning that allows for a definitive definition of anything to be established.

And yet, if we are serious about music being important, it is our duty to try to find a way to say precisely what we mean by that, even if only provisionally. It is the best we can possibly do, in both the positive and negative sense. In the end, there is no problem with every study having its own well-defined threshold for causal claims attached to its own bespoke definition for what music is supposed to be, provided it is done with sufficient rigor and causal claims are not founded on decisions made after the fact. But those sort of things are technical matters that's besides the point of the present question. It is only if we insist that there is one and only meaning for music that must be found before anything else can be considered, or that causality must be perfectly logically established before any theoretical claims can even be considered that any of this becomes an obstacle to investigation. Because these things are impossible to solve to begin with.

Douglas Scott

On Mon, 17 Aug 2020 at 05:41, Colette McKAY <CMcKAY@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I agree with everyone about the importance of music to humankind. From this point of view it would be an interesting research study to look at the psychological motivations of researchers who run studies to "show" the benefits gained by music training for non-music domains of cognition etc. Are they generally just interested in the scientific study of far transfer of learning effects, with music as an example? Or are they motivated by a need to "prove" music education has non-music benefits based on a perception that music is not well-enough justified for its own sake? Or something like "I love music therefore it would be good to show how good for us it is"?

The tendency for poor design, unsubstantiated claims, and confirmation bias in many existing published studies makes the first option less likely in my opinion.

Discuss....

Professor Colette McKay
Principal Scientist

Leader, Translational Hearing Research
Bionics Institute
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From: AUDITORY - Research in Auditory Perception [AUDITORY@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] on behalf of Ian Cross [ic108@xxxxxxxxx]
Sent: 17 August 2020 16:22
To: AUDITORY@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [AUDITORY] Papers on lack of effect of musical training

I agree: music matters, and it matters ever more in times where those in power have none of it. As Shakespeare put it " The man that hath no music in himself, Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils; The motions of his spirit are dull as night, And his affections dark as Erebus"

As far as definitions of music are concerned, I'd direct interested parties to Tomas Turino's excellent book Music as Social Life (Turino, T. (2008). Music as social life : the politics of participation. London: University of Chicago Press), ideas he covered in brief in a later paper (Turino, T. (2009). Four Fields of Music Making and Sustainable Living. The World of Music, 51(1), 95-117). As for my own ideas about music — they evolve, but I'd suggest two papers that present ideas point in the direction of definitions:

Cross, I. (2012). Cognitive Science and the Cultural Nature of Music. Topics in Cognitive Science, 4(4), 668-677.

Cross, I. (2014). Music and communication in music psychology. Psychology of Music, 42(6), 809-819.

Ian Cross