IDEA Lecture with Daniel Müllensiefen
The development of musical talent: Empirical evidence, methodological challenges, and a new model.

The term talent can be problematic when used in the context of musical development because of its biased association with the nature / nurture debate. However, we suggest a new definition of musical talent that is not partisan to either side of that debate but lends itself to empirical investigations of individual differences in terms of speed and ease of musical learning. According to this new definition, talent is defined as a profile of  psychological attributes measured at a given developmental stage that  predicts the rate of musical learning and development over the next developmental stage.
This new talent concept carries some important implications that are in line with empirical evidence:  Long-term predictions of musical development and success will often not be very accurate  and the assessment of talent requires different assessment techniques at different developmental stages. The latter raises methodological challenges for the assessment of relevant psychological attributes at different levels of age, linguistic ability and musical skill. We suggest a number of approaches that can be used to assess talent in young children as well as in adults.

The IDEA Lectures (Interdisciplinary Debates on the Empirical Aesthetics of Music) aim at bringing together internationally well-known researchers who discuss questions that relate to the production and reception of music from various perspectives. Musicologists from all branches of their discipline take part as do musicians, psychologists, cognitive scientists, sociologists, philosophers and ethnologists.

External guests are welcome.
Please call for registration 069 8300 479-201.