Selection of subjects

Subjects were required to have studied at least one musical

instrument for a minimum period of five years and, in addition,

were required to be currently taking lessons and participating in

at least one musical activity (particularly orchestral playing).

In any study of music processing there are several problems con­

be encapsulated in three specific questions:

(1) Are there qualitative, or merely quantitative, differences

between musicians and non-musicians? Thus, can findings from

experiments using only musicians be generalised to the population

as a whole?

(2) What is meant by musical ability and how might it affect the

outcome of particular experiments?

(3) How is musical aptitude related, if at all, to musical experience?

All three questions were considered before a subjects pool

was decided upon,and will be considered below.

2.3.1 Differences between musicians and non-musicians

Some studies of music processing, particularly laterality

studies, have found qualitative differences between musicians and

non-musicians (for example, Bever & Chiarello, 1974; Johnson, 1977).

Other laterality studies have fround no such differences (for example,

Franklin, 1977).

A study by Hargreaves & Colman (1981) found that subjects'

aesthetic responses to music varied considerably depending on

musical training. Musicians tended to describe music 'objectively',

that is, referring to structural points about the music (embodied

aspects of the music) whereas non-musicians tended to note 'affective*

aspects of the music (referring more to designative aspects of the

5 4

.

However, this does not in itself suggest that musicians

and non-musicians process music differently — musicians may perceive

affective meaning in music but consider objective analysis more

important, whilst non-musicians may perceive structure in music

but be unable to describe it adequately.

Other studies suggest that differences between musicians

and non-musicians may be quantitative, rather than qualitative.

Sloboda & EJworthy (1981) found that when non-musicians were pre­

sented with a response measure which they could easily understand,

the difference in performance levels between musicians and non­

musicians was small. More recently Cuddy (1982) reports:

"...in much of our work with pattern in tone sequences we have found the untrained listener to respond qualitatively in the same manner as the trained listener..." (p3).

Carlsen (1981) found no effect for musical training in his

study of the expectancies created by different melody beginnings.

Thus, studies specifically concerned with melody processing suggest

that differences between musicians and non-musicians may be small

and only quantitative in nature. This leads directly to the second

question.

2.3.2 Musical ability

What is the nature of musicianship? Does the ability to play

a musical Instrument mean that one will score highly on a test of

Shuter-Dyson's (1981) extensive survey of musical ability shows

that the measurement and assessment of musical ability is fraught

with the same difficulties as intelligence measurement — factor

analysis reveals controversy over the nature of the ability itself,

and different testsare differentially loaded for different factors.

Therefore assessing musical ability with tests might not be

a guide to performance on the precise experimental task. For this

reason subjects were not assessed in this way.

2.3.3 Aptitude vs Experience

Perhaps the most important question to ask is whether skill

at playing a musical instrument and experience of music contributes

towards performance in musical tasks.

Gaede et al (1978) found that laterality effects for aptitude were more important than experiential factors. Shuter-Dyson (1982)

suggests that there is a broad distinction between musical aptitude

and musical experience, and that aptitude might be of greater

importance than experiential factors.

It is clear from most music perception experiments that

subject groups are separated by experiential factors — 'musicians'

56

This definition, however, is convenient, and is the one

used in the experiments to be reported in the thesis.

The answers to the three questions suggest that differences

between musicians and non-musicians may be small, and that playing

an instrument in itself suggests little about aptitude.

Thus, in the studies reported here the subject pool decided

upon were practising 'musicians' who satisfied the criteria outlined

at the beginning of this section. The main reason for this choice

was that it was thought that musicians would be more confident in

their responses and of their listening skills (non-musicians often

report inability to perform a task even before they have attempted

it) and to perform at a higher level which would, however, not be

qualitatively different from responses made by non-musicians. Indeed,

the problems of separating 'musical' from 'non-musical', as described

above,makes any theory of qualitative differences difficult to uphold.

The 'average ability' of man (Blacking, 1971) is closer to the

view taken here — that man possesses an inherent 'musicality* which is

somewhat independent of musical training.

Subjects were not screened before the start of the experiments

for ability at the task to be performed, as is sometimes done

w h o d o not. T h i s , as a n y p r a c t i s i n g m u s i c i a n w i l l r e p o r t , i m p l i e s n o t h i n g a b o u t a p t i t u d e , w h i c h m a y b e t h e g r e a t e r f a c t o r .

and any models suggested, based on the results, might be models of

■ competent'melody processing only,rather than a more general model

applying to subjects who are not very good at the task to be per­

formed as well as those that are selected on the basis of pre­

experiment screening.

Subjects were screened, however, for any hearing difficulties

and were excluded from the experiment if they possessed any pronounced

hearing difficulties.

All subjects satisfied the minimum criterion for musical

experience (see the beginning of the section) but the range of

experience was large — from subjects just above the criterion to

semi-professional. None of the subjects were fully professional.