Subject: Re: Musician's IQ From: Peter Lennox <P.Lennox@xxxxxxxx> Date: Sat, 9 Aug 2008 11:40:00 +0100 List-Archive:<http://lists.mcgill.ca/scripts/wa.exe?LIST=AUDITORY>Sorry I can't access this reference (am on holiday), but a researcher in Manchester, Uk, in the late '90s or early this century, using fMRi and members of orchestra (pro musicians) found positive correlations between offsets of age-related deficits in memory and spatial tasks, and time spent practiing music. Although this isn't directly addressing the IQ question (and I'm not even sure one can, anyway) it is addressing a behavioural outcome of IQ, in the form of sepcific cognitive tasks. It's not suprising really, given McGuire et al's findings on development of part of thed hippocampus and time spent learning and using London maps in the study of cab drivers in the 90s regards ppl p.s - in any event, I can't help feeling that trying to prove such a huge proposition as the correlation(s) between IQ (howsoever measured) and musical skills and practise, is far too big a task for an undergrad dissertation - or have I got the wrong end of the stick? Dr Peter Lennox Director of Signal Processing and Applications Research Group (SPARG) School of Technology, Faculty of Arts, design and Technology University of Derby, UK e: p.lennox@xxxxxxxx t: 01332 593155 w: http://sparg.derby.ac.uk/SPARG/Staff_PLX.asp ________________________________________ From: AUDITORY - Research in Auditory Perception [AUDITORY@xxxxxxxx On Behalf Of Al Bregman [al.bregman@xxxxxxxx Sent: 09 August 2008 03:37 To: AUDITORY@xxxxxxxx Subject: Re: Musician's IQ Dear list, I've been reading the discussion on musicians and intelligence. As an experimental psychologist, I see a major problem in the interpretation of any data about the IQ of musicians: Even if it were found that musicians were smarter than non-musicians, and better musicians were even smarter, a question about the direction of causality would arise. Are people better musicians because they are smarter or vice-versa? Research that was seriously interested in the effects of music on intelligence would have to use identical twins who differed in musical training, or at least take out the effects of the IQs of the parents through covariance analysis. Cheers, Al ------------------------------------------------------------------- Albert S. Bregman, Emeritus Professor Psychology Department, McGill University 1205 Docteur Penfield Avenue Montreal, QC, Canada H3A 1B1. Office: Phone: (514) 398-6103 Fax: (514) 398-4896 Residence phone & fax: (514) 484-2592 www.psych.mcgill.ca/labs/auditory/Home.html -------------------------------------------------------------------