Music: Where Cognition and Emotion Meet

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors provide evidence that most music has the kind of structure which is easily learned and understood by the human mind and evidence relating to motivation, and the very high value which many individuals place on their engagement with music.

Abstract: Music presents a puzzle for researchers into skill and its acquisition. On the one hand, people love music and devote much time and effort to putting themselves in the way of it. On the other hand the levels of musical skill achieved by the vast majority of people in contemporary western society are surprisingly low. On the face of it, music has all the characteristics which would lead one to predict that many people should be highly skilled at it. A long tradition of research into skill and its acquisition (cf. Ericsson & Smith, 1991; Ericssson, 1996) suggests that structure plus motivation plus practice leads to skill. In reviewing these four aspects I will first provide evidence that most music has the kind of structure which is easily learned and understood by the human mind. Second I will review evidence relating to motivation, and the very high value which many individuals place on their engagement with music. Third I will review evidence of the intimate link between level and nature of practice activities and achievement in music. Fourthly, and more speculatively, I will outline some potential inhibitors to musical achievement, in an attempt to formulate hypotheses about why, given such an apparently propitious set of circumstances, population outcomes in the area of music achievement are so dire. These inhibitors, whilst having individual psychological consequences, are rooted in wider social and cultural phenomena.