Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Musical talent related to "mathematical" giftednes

Hi,

My son's school (grades 8-12) plans to start grouping a "stream" of mathy kids with the musically talented (who are already placed in a class by audition).

It was stated that "musically talented kids are also gifted in math". This was stated as if it is a well known scientifically proven fact.

Does anyone know if this has been proven, or is it just "assumed"?

This does worry me. as a number of very mathematically gifted students I know, are not musically talented, I also know some very "verbal" kids who are talented musically. It is planned to offer the same advanced math program to the class, who have been identified through high math achievement, or musical ability.

Anyone have any comments?

Steph

Ask them for their research.

I am not an expert on this, but I recall studies saying that learning to play an instrument at a young age can help kids do better in math (something about growing brain connections?).

I also think there are studies showing a correlation between musical talent and math talent. Of course, correlation is only correlation. And that doesn't mean that if a kid is good in one they are automatically good in another.

Why not just test kids to see if they are good in math?

None of this means the research doesn't exist. . .I think it would be interesting to read it.

So the musical children are already grouped together, and the proposal is to add the mathematical children to that group? If there's an advantage to having either group together, this sounds pretty sane actually, even though it's obviously not true that *all* children gifted in one are gifted in the other. (I've personally seen the two occur together often enough that if research showed no correlation I'd disbelieve the research!)

You could look at it several ways. Assuming that grouping the musical children together is working well and they want to continue that, they have two options:
- have two separate groups, a new one for maths and the existing one for music. Perhaps impractical, and the thought experiment would probably yield lots of cases where they'd think "but what about X who is gifted in both; which group does X go in?"
- continue to have just the musical children separately. If many of them, in practice, need extension work in maths, it would be very natural to provide it in that group [even if not everyone in the group needs it, having a concentration of children who do need it in one class broadens options], and then to think "hang on, how about X who is gifted in maths but is not in the music group - wouldn't it make sense to have X here too?" (Particularly true if X is also fairly good at music, just not enough to make the cut for the music group.)

Any grouping system is obviously a compromise, and could never be seen as a complete answer to all the children's needs, but I could believe that this might be an arrangement that worked well pragmatically, based on what I've seen.

Our personal experience shows a difference in types of acheivement. One ds is accellerated in math, but not gifted. he is also proficient in music, but not gifted. Meaning, compared to other same age kids he looks gifted, but we know better. He is just ahead. Other ds has intuitive relationship with both math and music. He only needs words to hook to thoery in both. I wonder if the relationship occurs at a certain threshold.
(edit) OK, wasn't clear. I mean, I wonder if a EG/PG kid gifted in math would genuinely not be able to take an instrument to a higher level. I'm just thinking if they put their heart to it, it would happen.

Not sure this can be vetted in a school, but I'm online and saw this, so added my 2 cents.

It is correlated in DD's case. They wanted her to take piano before she was 3.5, when we were just trying to get into a music and me kind of class. We finally agreed on her 4th birthday. She was already showing signs of being highly gifted in math at 3, when her Montessori teacher told us how far she was working their math area in just 2 months.

The Special Music School, that is selective on assumed musical ability, doesn't do any homework in K what I saw in grade 1 looked like K math to me. Yet, by 8th grade, the kids there do so well that most of them get into Styvescant. The entrance exam requires well above average math scores.

Is it giftedness in math or does music create the right synapse construction. When you think of how much brain development there is, especially reasoning, right through to our mid 20s, maybe there is a big nurture factor here.

Though why is it, that so many of these super genius' like Kit Armstrong are so good at piano?

There is a professor at NYU who has done research that shows string or piano lessons increase IQ, 6-7 points per year in the first couple of years. Yes, 6-7 points though this was done with a group from inner city, so you could have mean level IQs around 100.

Ren

It certainly is an interesting idea.

I was never identified as GT (never had any testing) but most probably am MG. Math was always my very best subject... not my favourite, mind you, but the one that I 'just got'. I always felt that it was the most simple of subjects because your answers were either right or wrong. If you could understand the steps than it was easy to get to the right answer. I have played the piano since I was 5, so almost 30 years now. I don't know if I was/am a gifted pianist or I just worked my butt off to be slightly better than a lot of others. In any event, I always found that the music 'just made sense' and, in my mind, it gave me the same feeling as math did. You either did it right or you didn't. Hard to put into words, I guess!

My daughter has been playing piano for five years now, and she is definitely gifted in mathematics... but she isn't one of those people that I would say have a linked ability with the two. Well, maybe she is, actually. She definitely has a good ear and always has, starting playing in quite a focused way on any keyboard she could find at about 12-16 months old, etc.

She hates to practice (in either area) which is distinctly limiting in terms of her performance. But her "sight-reading" skills are phenomenally good, and that is something that, IMO, is a natural gift that one either has or doesn't. When she's "on" she can learn things in either area with pretty amazing speed... but as I said, 'drill/practice' is another matter.

In our extended families, we have four professional musicians. Only one of those people also exhibited mathematical gifts, though all of them are multi-instrumentalists, good theoreticians, etc. Only one of them (and not the same one) exhibited another realm of gifted ability, so far as I can tell. The other two are "merely" musically gifted, if that makes sense. Anecdote is of limited use, granted.

I suspect that the link isn't entirely causative. That is, I think it is possible to have one without the other, but the coincidence rate is high. Perhaps that is because there is a single underlying area of cognitive giftedness that contributes to prodigy in BOTH-- but is not sufficient for either. (If that makes sense.) That is if A + B + C, then musically gifted, and if A + C + D, then mathematically gifted... meaning that if a person has A + B + C + D, then that person has BOTH profiles.

If the person is 'missing' only B, then they might be tone deaf but mathematically brilliant, or something. If they only have A and B, then they might appear to be 'good' but not exceptional at either area. I'm guessing that the commonalities between the two areas (A and C in my example) are probably not unusual, which accounts for the observation that it seems to be statistically true that many individuals are gifted in BOTH areas. For the visual among us, this is the same as saying that this is a Venn diagram with a HUGE area of overlap in the middle.

Both abilities are extremely complex, cognitively. Assuming that only four factors contribute is likely a vast oversimplification.

Does it make sense to group musically gifted children with mathematically gifted ones? Well, probably not much more than it makes sense to group verbally gifted children with artistically gifted ones. Sure, there is more overlap within the two groups than with other manifestations of giftedness, but there are probably going to be plenty of examples of children that have high potential in one area but not the other.

My son is very excentional gifted in math, and also talnet in music

How is your DS, Mathboy? Is he at school yet, or is that next year? DS7 is also very precocious in maths (though, not to scare you, he didn't know as much maths as your DS at his age - he really got going with maths around his 5th birthday and has been accelerating ever since) and I'm always interested to hear about others like that!

Some of them are; I know some who (most definitely!) aren't.

I think it's a truism or a stereotype.

DeeDee