Measuring Audiation or Tonal Memory? Evaluation of the Discriminant Validity of Edwin E. Gordon's “Advanced Measures of Music Audiation”

Abstract

Edwin E. Gordon developed the Advanced Measures of Music Audiation (AMMA) test to quantify the extent of an adult's stabilized audiation as a fundamental indicator of musical ability. Although intended to measure audiation exclusively, AMMA is based on a test design similar to the tonal memory subtest of the much older Measures of Musical Talents (SMMT) test developed by Carl Seashore (1919). However, previous studies have shown mixed results regarding AMMA's construct validity. It therefore remains unclear whether AMMA is suitable for measuring audiation exclusively, as intended by Gordon, or whether it additionally measures tonal memory. Accordingly, we tested this hypothesis in two steps. First, responses of 364 participants were used to identify – in terms of the Rasch model – those items of AMMA that could form a “revised” scale showing measurement invariance; second, we used a Bayesian post hoc correlation analysis ( N = 83) to measure the construct (discriminant) validity of the revised version of AMMA compared to an equal number of items in the tonal memory subtest of SMMT. Results from both studies revealed that (a) only five out of 30 items of AMMA showed a model fit that was adequate to form a scale which meets the psychometric requirements of invariant measurement, although with a low internal consistency and an increased probability for ceiling effects, and that (b) both measurements showed a strong correlation ( Mdnτ = 0.56, 95% CI [0.42, 0.70], BF+0 = 2.67·1012). We can thus conclude that there is no practical evidence to assume that both test procedures (AMMA and SMMT) are independent.