ArticleBehavior research methods2022
Can musical ability be tested online?
Article in Behavior research methods, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 12 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
12 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 8 citations in OpenAlex.
- How is musical expertise related to executive functions? A systematic review and meta-analysis.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2026Pooled it
- The relationship between individual sensitivity to music reward and rhythmic processing.Psychological research · 2026Article
- Musical ability and emotion recognition in speech prosody: The role of pitch discrimination.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2026Article
- Music@Home-Retrospective: A new measure to retrospectively assess childhood home musical environments.Behavior research methods · 2024Article
- Prosodic discrimination skills mediate the association between musical aptitude and vocal emotion recognition ability.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Audiovisual integration in the McGurk effect is impervious to music training.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Predictive coding in musical anhedonia: A study of groove.PloS one · 2024Article
- Article
- Individual differences in musical ability among adults with no music training.Quarterly journal of experimental psychology (2006) · 2023Article
- The day-of-invitation effect on participation in web-based studies.Behavior research methods · 2022Article
- A specific relationship between musical sophistication and auditory working memory.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Decoding everyday levels of musical training from subcortical white-matter architecture.Imaging neuroscience (Cambridge, Mass.)Article
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
6 authors at 4 institutions in 4 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
We sought to determine whether an objective test of musical ability could be successfully administered online. A sample of 754 participants was tested with an online version of the Musical Ear Test (MET), which had Melody and Rhythm subtests. Both subtests had 52 trials, each of which required participants to determine whether standard and comparison auditory sequences were identical. The testing session also included the Goldsmiths Musical Sophistication Index (Gold-MSI), a test of general cognitive ability, and self-report questionnaires that measured basic demographics (age, education, gender), mind-wandering, and personality. Approximately 20% of the participants were excluded for incomplete responding or failing to finish the testing session. For the final sample (N = 608), findings were similar to those from in-person testing in many respects: (1) the internal reliability of the MET was maintained, (2) construct validity was confirmed by strong associations with Gold-MSI scores, (3) correlations with other measures (e.g., openness to experience, cognitive ability, mind-wandering) were as predicted, (4) mean levels of performance were similar for individuals with no music training, and (5) musical sophistication was a better predictor of performance on the Melody than on the Rhythm subtest. In sum, online administration of the MET proved to be a reliable and valid way to measure musical ability.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.