>From what I could tell from what I've read about this:
(1) The sample size was not terribly large (20 in the non-musician group, 20 in
the musician group). Understandable, as they have to pay their subjects, but
still makes it only a preliminary type of study.
(2) It was a correlation study, not causation.
(3) They were more than likely college students. :-)
(4) The groups were matched for like demographics and indicators, such as
age/sex/SAT score.
(5) Not sure what they meant by higher IQ scores. IQ scores as a whole have
been a very controversial topic, to say the least.
(6) There were some subjective findings that were interesting, but probably not
worth much ("musicians has a greater diversity of answers in the creativity
tests.").
In spite of all that, I found the article on study interesting (no I have not
read the original paper, it's not yet published). Why? I generally have felt
that teaching the three R's but ignoring the arts as many schools are doing
because of budget cuts is a false economy. As Mr Holland said, if you take away
music and the arts, soon there won't be anything worth reading or writing about.
---- John Howell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> At 8:45 PM -0400 10/5/08, timothy price wrote:
> >FYI
> >
> >Musicians use both sides of their brains more frequently than average people
> >
> >
> >Vanderbilt University
> >Thu, 02 Oct 2008 06:11 UTC
> >Supporting what many of us who are not musically talented have often
> >felt, new research reveals that trained musicians really do think
> >differently than the rest of us. Vanderbilt University psychologists
> >have found thatprofessionally trained musicians more effectively use
> >a creative technique called divergent thinking, and also use both
> >the left and the right sides of their frontal cortex more heavily
> >than the average person.
>
> Hi, Timothy, and everyone else. This may turn out to be a valid
> study, but I'd sure like to read the study itself rather than this
> press release. But in any case I would have to question whether the
> experiment was set up to identify cause and effect, or just
> correlation.
>
> It is interesting, however, that the experimenters seem to have
> identified "musicians" as "instrumentalists," and ignored singers as
> an important class of "musicians."
>
> They apparently also made no effort to differentiate between training
> that MUSICIANS would identify as more creative--i.e., composition and
> jazz improvisation--and training simply as performers.
>
> A preliminary study at best, but perhaps interesting if it were to
> lead to studies in rather more detail.
>
> As to the basic hypothesis, it's already accepted by most musicians
> just on an observational basis, and might be considered proving the
> obvious.
>
> John
>
>
> --
> John R. Howell, Assoc. Prof. of Music
> Virginia Tech Department of Music
> College of Liberal Arts & Human Sciences
> Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S.A. 24061-0240
> Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034
> (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED])
> http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html
>
> "We never play anything the same way once." Shelly Manne's definition
> of jazz musicians.
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