Can Musical Ability be Tested Online?

Correia, Ana Isabel; Vincenzi, Margherita; Vanzella, Patrícia; Pinheiro, Ana P.; Lima, César F.; Schellenberg, E. Glenn

doi:10.31234/osf.io/kg64j

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

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“…For demographics, L2 ability had small associations with gender, education, and cognitive ability. Similar but illusory male superiority effects are evident for self-estimates of IQ (Furnham et al, 2005), academic ability (Cooper et al, 2018), job performance (Herbst, 2020), and musical ability (Correia et al, 2023), even though actual ability does not differ between men and women. For education and general ability, positive associations with L2 ability provided evidence for the construct validity of our measure.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 77%

Is musical expertise associated with self-reported foreign-language ability?

Schellenberg¹,

Correia²,

Lima³

2023

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Perfor

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Many claims have been made about links between musical expertise and language ability. Rhythm ability, in particular, has been shown to predict phonological, grammatical, and second-language (L2) abilities, whereas music training often predicts reading and speech-perception skills. Here, we asked whether musical expertise—musical ability and/or music training—relates to L2 (English) abilities of Portuguese native speakers. Participants (N = 154) rated their L2 ability on seven 7-point scales, one each for speaking, reading, writing, comprehension, vocabulary, fluency, and accent. They also completed a test of general cognitive ability, an objective test of musical ability with melody and rhythm subtests, and a questionnaire that measured music training and other aspects of musical behaviors. L2 ability correlated positively with education and cognitive ability but not with music training. It also had no association with musical ability or with self-reports of musical behaviors. Moreover, Bayesian analyses provided evidence for the null hypotheses (i.e., no link between L2 and rhythm ability, no link between L2 and years of music lessons). In short, our findings—based on participants’ self-reports of L2 ability—raise doubts about proposed associations between musical and second-language abilities, which may be limited to specific populations or measures.

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