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Musical Ability, Expression, and Appreciation
The relationships between musical aptitude and musical-association responses were examined in a sample of 295 Chinese, gifted students from Hong Kong. Musical aptitude was assessed on tonal imagery, rhythm imagery, and musical sensitivity, whereas musical-association responses were assessed based on students' drawings and narrative descriptions generated in response to listening to an excerpt of music. Two indices of association responses, the total number of associations and the complexity of expressiveness in the associations, were developed based on expert judges' ratings on the qualitative data. Tonal imagery and tonal imagery with musical sensitivity were found to predict significantly the total number of associations and the complexity of associations, respectively-connections that can be further explored in future studies.
Current interests in the development of diverse talents in students have brought particular importance to the examination of musical talent in the school setting (see Haroutounian, 2002). Perhaps one of the earliest signs that a child might be talented in music is the child's strong interest and delight in musical sounds (Scott & Moffett, 1977; Sosniak, 1985a, 1985b; Radford, 1990). Unlike their age peers, musically talented children usually begin to sing at a younger age, and often before they can speak (Shuter-Dyson, 1986). Moreover, after hearing a song, they are able to sing it back with great accuracy, demonstrating their exceptional musical memory (Judd, 1988). They may also match pitches with precision, although perfect pitch is not consistently associated with musical talent (Winner & Martino, 2000). The extraordinary ability of musically talented children to play back what they hear is said to be nonreflective and tacit, because these children often report that they cannot imitate a piece if they think about it (Bamberger, 1986). Taken together, it seems that the sensitivity to the structure of music such as tonality, key, harmony, and rhythm allows the child to remember music, and to play it back with ease, either vocally or with an instrument.
If sensitivity to the structure of music could be represented by the ability to sense and discriminate sound, aural discrimination could be considered a core element suggestive of musical talent. Thus, to a music psychologist, the measurement of the ability to discriminate sound is an objective assessment of musical aptitude...