A study of young people with math or music backgrounds found that those with better mathematical abilities also tended to have better musical abilities, and vice versa. However, this association was most likely driven by intelligence making important contributions to both ability groups. The paper was published in. journal of intelligence.
Musical abilities are the skills involved in perceiving, understanding, remembering, and producing musical elements. These include activities such as not only producing or performing music, but also perceiving pitch, rhythm, melody, harmony, tempo, and musical structure. Mathematical abilities, on the other hand, include skills such as understanding numbers, quantities, patterns, spatial relationships, logical relationships, and abstract symbolic rules.
Researchers have discovered a deep relationship between music and mathematics. Music is based on mathematical principles such as proportions and repeating patterns. Similarly, musical and mathematical abilities are relevant because they involve pattern detection, sequencing, memory, attention, and rule-based processing. For example, rhythm perception requires sensitivity to timing and proportion, which is also important in mathematics.
Music theory also includes mathematical elements such as pitch, proportion, scale, and harmonic relationships. Several studies have found small to moderate positive associations between musical training and mathematical performance.
Study author Michaela A. Meyer and colleagues investigated the relationship between various aspects of musical ability and mathematical ability. They point out that the evidence regarding the relationship between music and mathematics is mixed, with many studies reporting low-to-moderate associations and similar-sized effects of music training on mathematics performance. Based on this, the study authors expected to find small to moderate positive associations between various aspects of musical ability and math ability.
The study participants were 170 adults. Of these, 99 were women. Their average age was 25 years. The study authors recruited three different groups. 1) Mathematics group. Consists of students or graduates in mathematics, physics, engineering, or related fields. 2) Music groups composed of students or graduates of music, music education, musicology, or related fields. 3) Control group. It consists of participants who do not excel in either mathematics or music and study or work in fields unrelated to music or mathematics (mainly psychology).
Study participants completed assessments of musical ability (three tasks focused on musical perception, a computer-based adaptive beat tuning test, a mistuning perception test, and a melodic discrimination test), and mathematical ability (a basic numerical ability task, arithmetic fluency, and a test of advanced mathematical knowledge). They also completed self-report questionnaires regarding general musical activity (Goldsmith Musical Sophistication Index), mathematical experience (Mathematical Sophistication Index), and assessment of intelligence (Intelligence Structure Test).
The results showed that the association between tests of mathematical ability and musical ability was mostly weak. Tests of both mathematical and musical ability showed weak to moderate positive associations with intelligence. In other words, participants with better mathematical or musical abilities tended to be somewhat more intelligent compared to participants with worse mathematical or musical abilities. The only exception was the beat alignment test, whose performance was not associated with intelligence.
In general, the association between intelligence and mathematical ability tended to be slightly stronger than the association with musical ability. The study authors investigated whether the associations between musical ability and math ability with intelligence remained when they were controlled for, and the results showed that the associations were reduced to nearly zero. This means that the association between mathematical and musical ability is likely to be driven by intelligence, which influences both ability groups.
“These results suggest that intelligence accounts for a significant portion of the association between mathematical and musical ability,” the study authors concluded.
This study contributes to scientific understanding of the nature of musical and mathematical abilities. However, the design of this study does not allow us to infer causality from the results.
The paper, “Are Mathematics and Music Abilities Related Beyond Intelligence?” was authored by Michaela A. Meyer, Lara Spitzley, Sera Ursoy, Alexandra Hubman, Riley Delacruz, Roland H. Grabner, and Daniel Mullensiefen.
