Neue Studie zeigt, dass es die Intelligenz ist, die mathematische und musikalische Talente miteinander verbindet, und nicht gemeinsame Fähigkeiten oder ein gemeinsamer Rhythmus
General intelligence explains the link between math and music skills
Neue Studie zeigt, dass es die Intelligenz ist, die mathematische und musikalische Talente miteinander verbindet, und nicht gemeinsame Fähigkeiten oder ein gemeinsamer Rhythmus
General intelligence explains the link between math and music skills
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A new study in Journal of Intelligence (2026) tested if math and music abilities share unique skills beyond general intelligence; researchers recruited 170 young adults (~25yo; 99women) from Math/Physics/Engineering backgrounds (43), Music/Musicology (34), and Controls (mostly Psychology, 73), and Mixed (20).
They measured musical perception via three adaptive tests; Beat Alignment Test (BAT; beat detection), Mistuning Perception Test (pitch accuracy), Melodic Discrimination Test (melody spotting) scores -4 to +4. Math skills covered basic numerical abilities (dot comparison, digits, ordinality via inverse efficiency score), arithmetic fluency (multiplications/subtractions), and higher knowledge (31item MPA test, 0-31 score). Intelligence used verbal/figural/numerical tasks from I-S-T2000R. Raw correlations showed weak positive links between math/music tasks. Both correlated weakly-moderately with intelligence (stronger for math; BAT exception). A latent variable model (CFA; good fit: RMSEA=0.044, CFI=0.986) found moderate math-music factor correlation (r=0.41), but it dropped to nonsignificant after adding intelligence as predictor.
TLDR; Intelligence accounts for nearly all the math-music overlap; no evidence for domain-specific shared mechanisms like rhythm/pattern processing. Correlational design limits causality; builds on mixed prior meta-analyses of music training effects.
Makes sense. The only place in which my piano playing skills were ever really matched was in university. it’s way more common to run into higher skilled musicians than the general population.
Well music is basically math.
Isn’t the finding suggesting that learning a skill, any skill, is an indicator of intelligence?
And even then it’s more about repetition and a willingness to keep trying and learning then intelligence?
So does it show that music and math are pre-indicators for high intelligence
Or that willing consistency towards a skill, such as math, music or any skill really, is a better indicator for high intelligence potential?
Edit: post got more attention then I expected, formulated my throughs better.
Ye that’s why all my skill level are always 100 iq (avrage) and not more or less.
Not sure how they would control for variances in teaching modalities across all the individuals matching to individual learning styles in two separate skills. On the surface this seems like such a generalized correlation with a lot of variables not accounted for.
My mom is amazing at maths and is in MENSA, and had been teaching piano & music since she was 16, so this tracks with my limited sample of 1 anecdote.
I think culture and family environment have a lot to do with it as well.
I teach music at the college level. We have many *extremely* talented classical musicians in our classes. Some of them could’ve gone to a top conservatory — just extraordinary levels of skill and musicianship.
But…The majority of them are either premed or engineering majors. And most of them are Asian American. Their parents put them in front of a piano or a violin when they were six or seven years old and made them practice and take music seriously …and also made them do their math and science homework.
Almost all of these young people are gonna be doctors and engineers, but they are often extraordinarily good musicians who plan to keep playing classical music for the rest of their lives as high level amateurs.