Investigating the Relationship Between Childhood Music Practice and Pitch-Naming Ability in Professional Musicians and a Population-Based Twin Sample

Abstract

The relationship between pitch-naming ability and childhood onset of music training is well established and thought to reflect both genetic predisposition and music training during a critical period. However, the importance of the amount of practice during this period has not been investigated. In a population sample of twins (N = 1447, 39% male, 367 complete twin pairs) and a sample of 290 professional musicians (51% male), we investigated the role of genes, age of onset of playing music and accumulated childhood practice on pitch-naming ability. A significant correlation between pitch-naming scores for monozygotic (r = .27, p < .001) but not dizygotic twin pairs (r = −.04, p = .63) supported the role of genetic factors. In professional musicians, the amount of practice accumulated between ages 6 and 11 predicted pitch-naming accuracy (p = .025). In twins, age of onset was no longer a significant predictor once practice was considered. Combined, these findings are in line with the notion that pitch-naming ability is associated with both genetic factors and amount of early practice, rather than just age of onset per se. This may reflect a dose–response relation between practice and pitch-naming ability in genetically predisposed individuals. Alternatively, children who excel at pitch-naming may have an increased tendency to practice.

Auditory temporal resolution and backward masking in musicians with absolute pitch

“…Evidence supporting this hypothesis shows that musicians with earlier onset of musical training also perform better at pitch identification tasks ( Gregersen et al, 1999 ; Deutsch et al, 2006 , 2009 ; Vanzella and Schellenberg, 2010 ; Leite et al, 2016 ), and young children outperform adults in pitch identification tasks after only 3 weeks of training ( Russo et al, 2003 ). The “genetic hypothesis” states that AP is a genetically determined trait, and studies have pointed to genes associated with AP ( Theusch et al, 2009 ; Gregersen et al, 2013 ) and to a higher prevalence of high-performance AP among twins in comparison to non-twins ( Theusch and Gitschier, 2011 ; Bairnsfather et al, 2022a ). Finally, although initially disregarded, the “practice hypothesis” gained attention from the scientific community with recent studies showing that, with intensive training, some adults are capable of reaching an extraordinarily high and long-lasting precision at identifying pitches, comparable to musicians with “naturally” high AP ability ( Van Hedger et al, 2019 ; Wong et al, 2020a , 2020b ).…”