Theses and Dissertations from UMD

Permanent URI for this communityhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2

New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a give thesis/dissertation in DRUM

More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.

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2016 - 20182

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Author: search.filters.author.Okada, Brooke Misao

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    Towards a Comprehensive Model of Musical Ability
    (2018) Okada, Brooke Misao; Slevc, L. Robert; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Over the past century, multiple tests measuring musical ability have been developed, and research has been investigating individual differences in musical ability to answer questions about the components of musical ability and their dissociations in amusic patients, the innate vs. acquired nature of musical skill, and the potential transfer from musical training to other abilities. However, there has been little consensus on what exactly constitutes musical ability and how to best measure this construct. Previous research has used a variety of tasks assessing mainly perceptual skills (e.g., same/different judgments in sequentially presented melodies), and outcomes from these tasks range from single indices (e.g., pitch ability) to composite scores from multiple tasks (e.g., pitch, rhythm, loudness, timbre). The current study uses individual differences data from 15 representative musical ability tasks (including perception and production measures) to assess the unity and diversity of musical ability, and uses the resulting comprehensive latent measure of musical ability to evaluate previously theorized links between musical ability and individual differences in musical experience, working memory, intelligence, personality factors, and socio-economic status. Results from latent variable model comparisons suggest that musical ability is best represented by related but separate pitch, timing, perception, and production factors. Consistent with previous research, a latent measure of musical ability was positively related to musical training, working memory, and intelligence; in contrast, musical ability was not related to openness to experience or socio-economic status.
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    Musical Training and Executive Functions
    (2016) Okada, Brooke Misao; Slevc, L. Robert; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Learning and performing music draws on a host of cognitive abilities. One likely aspect of cognition that may be related to musical training is executive function. To date, many studies have investigated this relationship; however, results from such studies are mixed and difficult to compare. In part, this is because most studies look at only one specific cognitive process, and even studies looking at the same process use different experimental tasks. The current study addresses these issues by administering a well-validated EF battery of multiple tasks tapping each EF component (Friedman et al., 2008) and a comprehensive measure of musical training (Müllensiefen, Gingras, Musil, & Stewart, 2014) to obtain reliable measures of individual differences in EF and musical experience. Results suggest that there is positive relationship between musical training and performance on updating tasks, but this relationship is not observed with performance on inhibition or shifting tasks.