Assessing musical abilities objectively: construction and validation of the profile of music perception skills.

Marcel Zentner,Lily N. C. Law,Joel Snyder

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0052508

Abstract

A common approach for determining musical competence is to rely on information about individuals’ extent of musical training, but relying on musicianship status fails to identify musically untrained individuals with musical skill, as well as those who, despite extensive musical training, may not be as skilled. To counteract this limitation, we developed a new test battery (Profile of Music Perception Skills; PROMS) that measures perceptual musical skills across multiple domains: tonal (melody, pitch), qualitative (timbre, tuning), temporal (rhythm, rhythm-to-melody, accent, tempo), and dynamic (loudness). The PROMS has satisfactory psychometric properties for the composite score (internal consistency and test-retest r>.85) and fair to good coefficients for the individual subtests (.56 to.85). Convergent validity was established with the relevant dimensions of Gordon’s Advanced Measures of Music Audiation and Musical Aptitude Profile (melody, rhythm, tempo), the Musical Ear Test (rhythm), and sample instrumental sounds (timbre). Criterion validity was evidenced by consistently sizeable and significant relationships between test performance and external musical proficiency indicators in all three studies (.38 to.62, p<.05 to p<.01). An absence of correlations between test scores and a nonmusical auditory discrimination task supports the battery’s discriminant validity (−.05, ns). The interrelationships among the various subtests could be accounted for by two higher order factors, sequential and sensory music processing. A brief version of the full PROMS is introduced as a time-efficient approximation of the full version of the battery.

Highlights

Across sciences, interest in music has been rising steeply in recent years
Interest in music has been rising steeply in recent years. One reason for this development is a growing concern to understand the role of musical ability in nonmusical faculties, ranging from motor skills and general intelligence to language processing and socio-emotional competencies, such as empathy
Rhythm skills have been found to be impaired in dyslexic children and training those skills holds promise as a remedy [1]

Summary

Introduction

Interest in music has been rising steeply in recent years (see Figure 1) One reason for this development is a growing concern to understand the role of musical ability in nonmusical faculties, ranging from motor skills and general intelligence to language processing and socio-emotional competencies, such as empathy. Understanding these links might be relevant to the understanding of deficits in these domains. Rhythm skills have been found to be impaired in dyslexic children and training those skills holds promise as a remedy [1] Another reason lies in the still poorly understood origins of human musicality in terms of both its evolutionary origin and its genetic transmission [2]. The goal of the current research is to fill this gap

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