The Nature and Nurture of Melody: A Twin Study of Musical Pitch and Rhythm Perception.

Abstract

Both genetic and environmental factors are known to play a role in our ability to perceive music, but the degree to which they influence different aspects of music cognition is still unclear. We investigated the relative contribution of genetic and environmental effects on melody perception in 384 young adult twins [69 full monozygotic (MZ) twin pairs, 44 full dizygotic (DZ) twin pairs, 70 MZ twins without a co-twin, and 88 DZ twins without a co-twin]. The participants performed three online music tests requiring the detection of pitch changes in a two-melody comparison task (Scale) and key and rhythm incongruities in single-melody perception tasks (Out-of-key, Off-beat). The results showed predominantly additive genetic effects in the Scale task (58%, 95% CI 42-70%), shared environmental effects in the Out-of-key task (61%, 49-70%), and non-shared environmental effects in the Off-beat task (82%, 61-100%). This highly different pattern of effects suggests that the contribution of genetic and environmental factors on music perception depends on the degree to which it calls for acquired knowledge of musical tonal and metric structures.